Abstract
We develop a numerical tool for particle-based simulations of Aeolian sand transport. Our model combines a Discrete-Element-Method for the sand particles with an efficient hydrodynamic description of the average turbulent horizontal wind velocity field over the granular bed, which has been developed in previous work and accounts for the two-way coupling of the granular and fluid phases. However, here we implement our model within the open source library LAMMPS for granular massively parallel simulations and incorporate a new grid coarsening scheme for the wind model. We show that our model quantitatively reproduces observed values of the steady-state (saturated) sand flux under various flow conditions. Furthermore, we model different conditions of mobile sand availability and find a strong dependence of the sand flux on this availability.
Highlights
Wind-blown (Aeolian) sand plays a vital role for a broad range of geophysical processes, including ripple and dune migration, rock abrasion and the emission of dust aerosols [1, 2]
Previous work has introduced a Discrete-Element-Method (DEM) for wind-blown sand, by two-way coupling the granular phase with an efficient hydrodynamic description of the average turbulent horizontal wind velocity over the surface [6, 7]
We develop our numerical model using the open source DEM library LAMMPS [8], which incorporates an environment for massively parallel simulations of granular systems (MPI implementation)
Summary
Wind-blown (Aeolian) sand plays a vital role for a broad range of geophysical processes, including ripple and dune migration, rock abrasion and the emission of dust aerosols [1, 2]. These processes are affected by the still poorly understood interactions of wind-blown sand particles with different types of soil, which can be fully or partially erodible. Such interactions and their effects on the sand flux are difficult to represent in theoretical models [3,4,5]. Mean particle diamater (dm) particle density (ρp) coefficient of friction (μp) air density (ρf) air viscosity
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