Depressurization of fine powders in a shock tube and dynamics of fragmented magma in volcanic conduits

Abstract

Samples of fine glass beads (mean grain size equal to 38 and 95 μm) have been depressurized within a vertical shock tube. These short-lived, rapid decompressions resemble discrete, cannon-like vulcanian explosions and produce two-phase flows that are inhomogeneous in density in both vertical and horizontal directions because of the presence of bubble-like heterogeneities. We suggest that also volcanic flows may present similar inhomogeneities in density. In the experimental apparatus the flow velocities increase from approximately 1 to 13 m/s when the pressure drop increases from approximately 200 to 900 mbar. A physical model of the initial velocities of expansions in the shock tube has been applied to a range of volcanic overpressures between 0.1 and 20 MPa, suggesting initial velocities of volcanic flows caused by the removal of a rock plug in volcanic conduits between 25 and 400 m/s. During the experiments at large pressure drops, as the mixture expands and moves up the tube, the flow front becomes highly irregular and bubble-like heterogeneities form. The shape of these bubbles becomes distorted and stretched in the turbulent flow. During the experiments at relatively small pressure drops, the sample oscillates when the particles, after the expansion, flow back and bounce upward again. Jets with diameter smaller than that of the tube are ejected from the oscillating samples generating independent pulses. Large bubble-like heterogeneities whose diameter is a significant fraction of the tube diameter can also discretize the flows. Similar mechanisms in real volcanoes may produce pulse-like ejections of gas–particle mixtures out of the vent.