Energy dissipation by submarine obstacles during landslide impact on reservoir - potentially avoiding catastrophic dam collapse

München

2017

Sonderdruck

202739

Dense geophysical mass flows such as landslides, debris flows and debris avalanches may generate super tsunami
waves as they impact water bodies such as the sea, hydraulic reservoirs or mountain lakes. Here, we apply a
comprehensive and general two-phase, physical-mathematical mass flow model (Pudasaini, 2012) that consists of
non-linear and hyperbolic-parabolic partial differential equations for mass and momentum balances, and present
novel, high-resolution simulation results for two-phase flows, as a mixture of solid grains and viscous fluid, impacting fluid reservoirs with obstacles. The simulations demonstrate that due to the presence of different obstacles in the water body, the intense flow-obstacle-interaction dramatically reduces the flow momentum resulting in the rapid energy dissipation around the obstacles.