How Bed Composition Affects Erosion by Debris Flows - An Experimental Assessment

Lonneke Roelofs; Tjalling de Haas; Eise Nota; Tom Flipsen; Pauline Colucci

doi:10.1029/2023GL103294

How Bed Composition Affects Erosion by Debris Flows - An Experimental Assessment

Lonneke Roelofs
, Tjalling de Haas
, Eise Nota
, Tom Flipsen
, Pauline Colucci

Landscape functioning, Geocomputation and Hydrology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

A solid physical understanding of debris-flow erosion is needed for both hazard prediction and understanding landscape evolution. However, the processes and forces involved in erosion by debris flows and especially how the erodible surface itself influences erosion are poorly understood. Here, we experimentally investigate the effects of bed composition on debris-flow erosion, by systematically varying the composition of an erodible bed in a small-scale debris-flow flume. The experiments show that water and clay content of an unconsolidated bed significantly control erosion magnitude by affecting the transfer of pore pressure, loading conditions, and contraction-dilation behavior of the bed. As the water content increases and the bed comes close to saturation, erosion increases rapidly, whereas for clay content an optimum for erosion exists around a clay content of 3%–4%. Our results show that small variations in bed composition can have large effects on debris-flow erosion, and thus volume growth and hazard potential.

Original language	English
Article number	e2023GL103294
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	50
Issue number	14
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103294
Publication status	Published - 28 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) (Grant 0.16.Veni.192.001 and Grant OCENW.KLEIN.495 to TdH). The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Arjan van Eijk, Bas van Dam, Marcel van Maarseveen, Henk Markies en Mark Eijkelboom in designing and constructing the flume and measurement set‐ups, as well as their assistance during the experiments. The authors would also like to thank Maarten Kleinhans for his contribution to improving the first draft of this manuscript and contributing to our understanding of some of the basic concepts around the influence of moisture content to sand packing and porosity. We would like to thank Dr. Elisabeth Bowman and one anonymous reviewer for their constructive and thorough response to the first version of this manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Authors.

Keywords

bed composition
debris flow
erosion
experiments

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10.1029/2023GL103294Licence: CC BY

Geophysical Research Letters - 2023 - Roelofs - How Bed Composition Affects Erosion by Debris Flows An ExperimentalFinal published version, 2.89 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "How Bed Composition Affects Erosion by Debris Flows - An Experimental Assessment",

abstract = "A solid physical understanding of debris-flow erosion is needed for both hazard prediction and understanding landscape evolution. However, the processes and forces involved in erosion by debris flows and especially how the erodible surface itself influences erosion are poorly understood. Here, we experimentally investigate the effects of bed composition on debris-flow erosion, by systematically varying the composition of an erodible bed in a small-scale debris-flow flume. The experiments show that water and clay content of an unconsolidated bed significantly control erosion magnitude by affecting the transfer of pore pressure, loading conditions, and contraction-dilation behavior of the bed. As the water content increases and the bed comes close to saturation, erosion increases rapidly, whereas for clay content an optimum for erosion exists around a clay content of 3\%{\textendash}4\%. Our results show that small variations in bed composition can have large effects on debris-flow erosion, and thus volume growth and hazard potential.",

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N2 - A solid physical understanding of debris-flow erosion is needed for both hazard prediction and understanding landscape evolution. However, the processes and forces involved in erosion by debris flows and especially how the erodible surface itself influences erosion are poorly understood. Here, we experimentally investigate the effects of bed composition on debris-flow erosion, by systematically varying the composition of an erodible bed in a small-scale debris-flow flume. The experiments show that water and clay content of an unconsolidated bed significantly control erosion magnitude by affecting the transfer of pore pressure, loading conditions, and contraction-dilation behavior of the bed. As the water content increases and the bed comes close to saturation, erosion increases rapidly, whereas for clay content an optimum for erosion exists around a clay content of 3%–4%. Our results show that small variations in bed composition can have large effects on debris-flow erosion, and thus volume growth and hazard potential.

AB - A solid physical understanding of debris-flow erosion is needed for both hazard prediction and understanding landscape evolution. However, the processes and forces involved in erosion by debris flows and especially how the erodible surface itself influences erosion are poorly understood. Here, we experimentally investigate the effects of bed composition on debris-flow erosion, by systematically varying the composition of an erodible bed in a small-scale debris-flow flume. The experiments show that water and clay content of an unconsolidated bed significantly control erosion magnitude by affecting the transfer of pore pressure, loading conditions, and contraction-dilation behavior of the bed. As the water content increases and the bed comes close to saturation, erosion increases rapidly, whereas for clay content an optimum for erosion exists around a clay content of 3%–4%. Our results show that small variations in bed composition can have large effects on debris-flow erosion, and thus volume growth and hazard potential.

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How Bed Composition Affects Erosion by Debris Flows - An Experimental Assessment

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Keywords

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