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Translational momentum of deformable submarine landslides off a slope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2023

Xiafei Guan
Affiliation:
Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, 519000, PR China State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City and Department of Ocean Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macao, PR China
Huabin Shi*
Affiliation:
Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, 519000, PR China State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City and Department of Ocean Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macao, PR China Center for Ocean Research in Hong Kong and Macau (CORE), PR China
*
† Email address for correspondence: huabinshi@um.edu.mo

Abstract

It has been reported that, in submarine landslides down a slope, only a small part of the landslide momentum was transferred to the tsunami while most was lost in the further propagation over the flat bed. The high momentum of landslides off a slope meant a long run-out and a great impact on underwater infrastructure. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the variation of momentum of deformable submarine landslides off a slope, i.e. the loss of momentum when the slides flow away from the slope over a flat bottom. In this paper, the translational momentum of deformable submarine granular landslides running down a non-erodible inclined bed is investigated with a two-phase smoothed particle hydrodynamics model. After flowing down the slope, the transport rate and flux of the landslide translational momentum along the propagation over the flat bottom are examined. The effects of physical variables of the slide, particularly the grain size, the initial compaction and the front intrusion angle on the variation of the translational momentum, are explored. Accordingly, scaling relations of the spatial-temporal maximum transport rate and flux of the landslide translational momentum, as well as those of the slide final run-out and the generated leading wave height, are proposed. These scaling relations, although based on numerical data of small-scale granular landslides, demonstrate a preliminary attempt to develop practical expressions in the framework of momentum for estimating the run-out of real submarine landslides and the impact on underwater infrastructure.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Figure 0

Figure 1. Set-up of the laboratory experiments of submarine granular landslides down a slope over non-erodible bottom.

Figure 1

Table 1. Values of the variables adopted in the two laboratory experiments.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Comparisons between the simulated (b-i–b-vi) and the observed (a-i–a-vi) profiles of the granular slide and the water surface in case A. The red solid and the white dashed curves in (b-i–b-vi) are the computed contours of granular volumetric fraction ${\alpha _s} = 0.40$ and ${\alpha _s} = 0.01$, respectively. The yellow dashed lines in (a-i–a-vi) are drawn to outline the experimental shape of the slide cloud. The cyan dashed lines in (a-i–a-vi) mark the observed water surface in the experiment while the cyan solid curves in (b-i–b-vi) outline the computed water surface.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Comparisons of the computed and the measured non-dimensional propagation lengths of the slide in case A.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Comparisons of the simulated and the observed elevations of the water surface above the slope toe at $x = 0\;\textrm{m}$ in case A.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Comparisons of the simulated profiles of the granular slide and the water surface with the observed experimental snapshots in case B. The red solid and the white dashed curves in (b-i–b-vi) are the computed contours of ${\alpha _s} = 0.40$ and ${\alpha _s} = 0.01$, respectively. The cyan dashed curves in (a-i–a-vi) and the solid ones in (b-i–b-vi) respectively mark the observed and the computed profiles of water surface.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Comparisons of the simulated and the observed elevations of the water surface at the wave gauge in case B.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Sketch of the transport rate and flux of the translational momentum across the section S-S.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Temporal variations of normalized transport rates of (a) the slide granular momentum $Q_s^{0.01}$, (b) the slide total momentum $Q_m^{0.01}$, (c) the granular momentum of the main slide body $Q_s^{0.40}$ and (d) the total momentum of the main slide body $Q_m^{0.40}$ across the sections at a distance of $L/{h_w} = 0.00,\;0.23,\;0.45,\;0.68,\;0.91,\;1.14$ away from the slope toe in case A.

Figure 9

Figure 9. Temporal variations of normalized fluxes of (a) the slide granular momentum $j_s^{0.01}$, (b) the slide total momentum $j_m^{0.01}$, (c) the granular momentum of the main slide body $j_s^{0.40}$ and (d) the total momentum of the main slide body $j_m^{0.40}$ across the sections at $L/{h_w} = 0.00,\;0.23,\;0.45,\;0.68,\;0.91,\;1.14$ in case A.

Figure 10

Figure 10. Fluid velocity fields and distribution of sediment concentration at (a) $T = 6.23$ when the first peak and (b) $T = 7.14$ when the second peak of $Q_m^{0.01}$ across the section $L/{h_w} = 0.23$ appear; (c) $T = 6.93$ when the first peak and (d) $T = 8.61$ when the second peak of $Q_m^{0.01}$ across the section $L/{h_w} = 0.45$ emerge. The red solid and dashed curves are the computed contours of ${\alpha _s} = 0.40$ and ${\alpha _s} = 0.01$, respectively.

Figure 11

Figure 11. Spatial variations of the temporal maximum (a) transport rates and (b) fluxes of the slide momentum along the propagation path in case A.

Figure 12

Figure 12. Temporal variations of (a) the transport rates of granular momentum $Q_s^{0.01}$ and $Q_s^{0.40}$, (b) the transport rates of total momentum $Q_m^{0.01}$ and $Q_m^{0.40}$, (c) the fluxes of granular momentum $j_s^{0.01}$ and $j_s^{0.40}$ and (d) the fluxes of total momentum $j_m^{0.01}$ and $j_m^{0.40}$ across the sections at $L/{h_w} = 0.00,\;0.15,\;0.30$ in case B.

Figure 13

Figure 13. Spatial variations of the temporal maximum (a) transport rates and (b) fluxes of the slide momentum along the propagation path in case B.

Figure 14

Figure 14. Fluid velocity fields and distribution of sediment concentration at (a) $T = 5.84$ when the peak of $Q_m^{0.01}$ across the section $L/{h_w} = 0.00$ appears and (b) $T = 6.71$ when there is the peak of $Q_m^{0.01}$ across the section $L/{h_w} = 0.15$. The red solid and dashed curves are the computed contours of ${\alpha _s} = 0.40$ and ${\alpha _s} = 0.01$, respectively.

Figure 15

Figure 15. Spatial variations of the temporal maximum (a) transport rates and (b) fluxes of the total momentum along the propagation path of the slides with different grain sizes.

Figure 16

Figure 16. Temporal evolution of (a) frontal position and (b) maximum granular velocity parallel to bed of the slides with different grain sizes.

Figure 17

Figure 17. Inter-phase drag force along the propagation direction x on grains, $f_{s,1}^d$, in the slides with a grain size of (a) ${d_s} = 0.8\;\textrm{mm}$ and (b) ${d_s} = 3.0\;\textrm{mm}$. The red solid and dashed curves are the computed contours of ${\alpha _s} = 0.40$ and ${\alpha _s} = 0.01$, respectively.

Figure 18

Figure 18. Leading waves at the slope toe $L/{h_w} = 0$ generated by the slides with different grain sizes. Here, $\eta $ is water elevation above the initial level. The arrow depicts that the height of the generated leading wave increases with the grain size.

Figure 19

Figure 19. Temporal evolution of frontal position of the slides with different values of initial compaction.

Figure 20

Figure 20. Leading waves at the slope toe generated by the slides with different values of initial compaction.

Figure 21

Figure 21. Spatial variations of the temporal maximum (a) transport rates and (b) fluxes of the total momentum along the propagation path of the slides with different values of initial granular volumetric fraction but the same grain size of ${d_s} = 0.8\;\textrm{mm}$.

Figure 22

Figure 22. Spatial variations of the temporal maximum (a) transport rates and (b) fluxes of the total momentum along the propagation path of the slides with different values of initial granular volumetric fraction but the same grain size of ${d_s} = 0.2\;\textrm{mm}$.

Figure 23

Figure 23. Spatial variations of the temporal maximum (a) transport rates and (b) fluxes of the total momentum along the propagation path of the slides with different values of front intrusion angle $\beta $.

Figure 24

Figure 24. Leading waves at the slope toe induced by the slides with different values of front intrusionangle $\beta $.

Figure 25

Table 2. Definition and classification of the variables involved in scaling analysis.

Figure 26

Figure 25. Linear regression analyses in log–log plots to determine the dependence of (a) $\varGamma /{\alpha _{s0}}({\rho _s} - {\rho _f}){V_0}g$, (b) $\varPhi /{\rho _f}g{h_w}$, (c) ${L_t}/{h_w}$ and (d) ${\eta _c}/{h_w}$ on the dimensionless grain size ${d_s}/{h_w}$. The dots represent the numerical data and the dashed lines are the best-fit curves. The formulas close to the fitting lines show the dependence on the dimensionless grain size according to the slope of the lines. The values of ${R^2}$ of the fit are shown.

Figure 27

Table 3. Values of ${R^2}$ for the dependence of non-dimensional $\varGamma $, $\varPhi $, ${L_t}$ and ${\eta _c}$ on each term in (4.9)–(4.12).

Figure 28

Table 4. Values of variables in all simulation cases. The values in bold are the changes relative to case A in the sensitivity study. Note that the mass of grains ${m_s} = {\alpha _{s0}}{\rho _s}{V_0}$ and the initial submergence of the slide ${\varDelta _s}$ are not independent variables. ${\varDelta _s}$ varies with the initial shape and position of the slide as well as the water depth.

Figure 29

Table 5. Values of dimensionless variables in all simulation cases.

Figure 30

Figure 26. Comparisons of the scaling relation results and the numerical data of the dimensionless (a) spatial-temporal maximum transport rate of slide momentum $\varGamma /{\alpha _{s0}}({\rho _s} - {\rho _f}){V_0}g$, (b) spatial-temporal maximum momentum flux $\varPhi /{\rho _f}g{h_w}$, (c) final run-out away from the slope toe ${L_t}/{h_w}$ and (d) elevation of the generated leading wave crest at the slope toe ${\eta _c}/{h_w}$. The dashed lines represent the ±20 % error bounds.

Figure 31

Figure 27. Initial layout of the SPH particles representing the granular–water mixture and solid boundaries in the simulation of Pilvar et al. (2019) experiment (case A).

Figure 32

Table 6. Values of model parameters adopted in the simulations.