Dynamic behavior of humid granular avalanches: Optical measurements to characterize the precursor activity

Abstract

Laboratory study of slope stability of granular media remains a challenge for modeling, understanding, and predicting natural hazards, such as avalanches and landslides, precursory signs of which are controlled by numerous physical parameters. The present work focuses on the impact of the humidity, in the range of 40-90%, on the stability of monodisperse dense packings of spherical beads. The beads are in a transparent box that is slowly and continuously tilted and allows simultaneous top and lateral optical measurements of global displacements of grains at the surface, defined as precursors. Humidity increases the cohesion between the grains. By performing successive avalanches that destabilize deeper granular layers, we assess the role of the exposure time to the high humidity rates in the diffusion process to reach the hygroscopic equilibrium inside the packing. We highlight an increase of the stability and first precursor angles, associated to a constant angle increment between two consecutive precursors, with a dependency with both the diameter (0.2,0.5, and 0.75 mm) and the material (glass and polystyrene) of the grains.