Publications related to Erosion and tectonics

Downscaling of Historical Wind Fields over Switzerland Using Generative Adversarial Networks

Anthony Christopher Davison, Ophélia Mireille Anna Miralles

Near-surface wind is difficult to estimate using global numerical weather and climate models, because airflow is strongly modified by underlying topography, especially that of a country such as Switzerland. In this article, we use a statistical approach ba ...

2022

Experimental and Numerical Study on Scour-Protection Methods in a Stilling Basin: Case Study of Chancy-Pougny Dam

Anton Schleiss, Giovanni De Cesare, Erik Bollaert, Sabine Chamoun, Davide Wüthrich

Chancy-Pougny is a run-of-river dam on the Swiss–French border constructed in the early 1920s. Since its commissioning, the operation of the four spillway gates has been responsible for a progressive erosion of the stilling basin. The future scour potentia ...

2021

Multiscale simulation of erosive wear in a prototype-scale Pelton runner

François Avellan, Ebrahim Jahanbakhsh, Sebastián Camilo Leguizamón Sarmiento, Siamak Alimirzazadeh

The technical capacity to predict the erosion process is instrumental for the optimization of the runner designs and operation strategies of hydroelectric plants. A multiscale model of erosion recently formulated by the authors and validated on a laborator ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2020

FVPM numerical simulation of the effect of particle shape and elasticity on impact erosion

François Avellan, Ebrahim Jahanbakhsh, Audrey Paulette Solange Maertens, Sebastián Camilo Leguizamón Sarmiento, Siamak Alimirzazadeh

The erosion of hydraulic machines by solid particle impacts is a widespread problem that leads to outage for expensive repairs, efficiency reduction, and cavitation enhancement. Numerical simulations can be used to study the phenomenon, provided they featu ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2019

Preferential Deposition of Snow and Dust Over Hills: Governing Processes and Relevant Scales

Michael Lehning, Marc Parlange, Francesco Comola, Marco Giovanni Giometto

Preferential deposition of snow and dust over complex terrain is responsible for a wide range of environmental processes and accounts for a significant source of uncertainty in the surface mass balances of cold and arid regions. Despite the growing body of ...

2019

Multiscale Modeling and Simulation of Erosive Wear in Pelton Turbines

Sebastián Camilo Leguizamón Sarmiento

Hydropower has been identified as a key technology to mitigate climate change due to its very low lifecycle greenhouse gas emission intensity and its capacity to integrate intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar into the electrical gri ...

EPFL2019

Simulation of the hydroabrasive erosion of a bucket: A multiscale model with projective integration to circumvent the spatio-temporal scale separation

François Avellan, Ebrahim Jahanbakhsh, Audrey Paulette Solange Maertens, Sebastián Camilo Leguizamón Sarmiento, Siamak Alimirzazadeh

The hydroabrasive erosion of hydraulic machine components, especially Pelton buckets and needles, is a widespread problem that entails significant costs. The multiscale nature of the process renders its simulation very computationally demanding unless spec ...

IOP PUBLISHING LTD2019

Multiscale Simulation of the Hydroabrasive Erosion of a Pelton Bucket: Bridging Scales to Improve the Accuracy

François Avellan, Ebrahim Jahanbakhsh, Audrey Paulette Solange Maertens, Sebastián Camilo Leguizamón Sarmiento, Siamak Alimirzazadeh

Erosive wear of hydraulic machines is a common issue, which results in efficiency degradation, the enhancement of cavitation, and the need for expensive maintenance. Although numerical simulations of the erosion process could be very useful, both for under ...

2019

From the clouds to the ground - Effects of flow-precipitation interactions on snow distribution in complex alpine terrain

Franziska Gerber

Knowledge about the spatial distribution of seasonal snow is essential e.g. to efficiently manage fresh water resources or for hydro-power companies. The large-scale gradient of snow accumulation over mountain ranges is mainly determined by lifting condens ...

EPFL2018

Erosion mechanisms during abrasive waterjet machining: Model microstructures and single particle experiments

Stefano Mischler, Johann Michler

The erosion mechanisms during abrasive waterjet (AWJ) machining have been examined for a variety of materials. However, no systematic study has considered the effect of the microstructure property relationship on the erosion mechanisms in metals. In this w ...

Elsevier Science Sa2017

Hydrodynamics of mountain-river confluences and its relationship to sediment transport

Mário Jorge Rodrigues Pereira Da Franca, Sebastián Guillén Ludeña

Mountain confluences are characterized by narrow and steep tributaries that provide important sediment load to the confluence, whereas themain channel supplies the dominant flow discharge. This results in a marked bed discordance between the tributary and ...

American Geophysical Union2017

Transport time scales in soil erosion modelling

David Andrew Barry, Seifeddine Jomaa, Mohsen Cheraghi

Unlike sediment transport in rivers, erosion of agricultural soil must overcome its cohesive strength to move soil particles into suspension. Soil particle size variability also leads to fall velocities covering many orders of magnitude, and hence to diffe ...

Soil Sci Soc Amer2017

Sediment replenishment: Influence of the geometrical configuration on the morphological evolution of channel-bed

Anton Schleiss, Mário Jorge Rodrigues Pereira Da Franca, Elena Battisacco

Dams trap sediment in the upstream reservoir, which may lead to river bed armoring, streambank erosion and failure, channel incision and reduction of the morphological diversity in the downstream river reaches. The replenishment of sediment is a mitigation ...

American Geophysical Union2016

Influence of consecutive sediment replenishment on channel bed morphology

Anton Schleiss, Mário Jorge Rodrigues Pereira Da Franca, Elena Battisacco, Lena Bösch

Dams interrupt the longitudinal connectivity of a river as they store water and trap sediment. When transport capacity downstream of dams exceeds sediment supply, water becomes hungry and channel incision, bed armouring and reduction of morphological diver ...

2016

Thermal energy in dry snow avalanches

Michael Lehning, Walter Steinkogler

Avalanches can exhibit many different flow regimes from powder clouds to slush flows. Flow regimes are largely controlled by the properties of the snow released and entrained along the path. Recent investigations showed the temperature of the moving snow t ...

Copernicus Gesellschaft Mbh2015

Experimental characterization of vegetation uprooting by flow

Paolo Perona, Benoît Crouzy, Katharina Maria Edmaier

We investigate vegetation uprooting by flow for Avena sativa seedlings with stem-to-sediment size ratio close to unity and vanishing obstacle-induced scouring. By inducing parallel riverbed erosion within an experimental flume, we measure the time-to-uproo ...

2015

Influence of snow cover properties on avalanche dynamics

Walter Steinkogler

Snow avalanches are a direct thread to many mountain communities around the world and already small avalanches can endanger traffic routes and result in loss of life or property. Their destructive power depends, among other things, on the overall mass and ...

EPFL2015

Simulation of Silt Erosion Using Particle-Based Methods

Ebrahim Jahanbakhsh

Increasing demand for clean sources of energy have forced electricity providers to paymore attention to their hydropower assets. Silt erosion is a destructive phenomenon that may occur in hydropower plants. The power plant subjected to silt erosion require ...

EPFL2014

Comprehensive numerical simulations of sediment transport and flushing of a Peruvian reservoir

Anton Schleiss, Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Philippe Heller

Numerical modeling of sediment transport in reservoirs, especially for sudden events such as flushing, is still a challenging research topic. In the present study, sediment transport and sediment flushing are simulated for a Peruvian reservoir. Situated in ...

CRC Press/Balkema2014

Investigation of turbulence flow and sediment entrainment around a bridge pier

Anton Schleiss, Elham Izadinia

Local scour around the obstacles such as bridge pier is the result of complex interaction between turbulent flow and sediment particles at the mobile bed. The entrainment of sediment particles from the bed is stochastic in nature and it is strongly influen ...

Springer Verlag2013