Publications de Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume

A Depth-Averaged Material Point Method for Shallow Landslides: Applications to Snow Slab Avalanche Release

Bertil Trottet, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Denis Aloyse Joseph Steffen, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny, Louis Marie Cédric Guillet

Shallow landslides pose a significant threat to people and infrastructure. Despite significant progress in the understanding of such phenomena, the evaluation of the size of the landslide release zone, a crucial input for risk assessment, still remains a c ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2023

Microstructural controls on the plastic consolidation of porous brittle solids

Henning Löwe, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny

2023

Using video detection of snow surface movements to estimate weak layer crack propagation speeds

Bertil Trottet, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Alec van Herwijnen

Dry-snow slab avalanches release due to crack propagation in a weak snow layer under a cohesive snow slab. Crack propagation speeds can provide insights into the potential size of avalanches and inform fracture and avalanche release models. Despite their i ...

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS2023

Different erosion and entrainment mechanisms in snow avalanches

Betty Sovilla, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Xingyue Li

Erosion significantly affects the dynamics of gravity-driven mass flows. In snow avalanches, the snow cover can be substantially eroded but only partially entrained, however, there are very limited investigations to substantiate this difference. Here, we s ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Towards a predictive multi-phase model for alpine mass movements and process cascades

Bertil Trottet, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny, Xingyue Li, Alessandro Cicoira

Alpine mass movements can generate process cascades involving different materials including rock, ice, snow, and water. Numerical modelling is an essential tool for the quantification of natural hazards. Yet, state-of-the-art operational models are based o ...

2022

Transition from sub-Rayleigh anticrack to supershear crack propagation in snow avalanches

Bertil Trottet, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Alec van Herwijnen, Grégoire Bobillier

Avalanches can occur when a porous snow layer lies beneath a dense cohesive snow slab. Field experiments and simulations now reveal different crack-propagation regimes in slab avalanches, similar to rupture propagation following an earthquake. ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Microstructural Origin of Propagating Compaction Patterns in Porous Media

Paul Berclaz, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny

Porous rocks, foams, cereals, and snow display a diverse set of common compaction patterns, including propagating or stationary bands. Although this commonality across distinct media has been widely noted, the patterns??? origin remains debated???current m ...

2022

Detrainment and braking of snow avalanches interacting with forests

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Xingyue Li, Louis Jean Henri Vedrine

Mountain forests provide natural protection against avalanches. They can both prevent avalanche formation in release zones and reduce avalanche mobility in runout areas. Although the braking effect of forests has been previously explored through global sta ...

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH2022

Numerical investigation of the effect of cohesion and ground friction on snow avalanches flow regimes

Betty Sovilla, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume

With ongoing global warming, snow avalanche dynamics may change as snow cohesion and friction strongly depend on temperature. In the field, a diversity of avalanche flow regimes has been reported including fast, sheared flows and slow plugs. While the sign ...

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE2022

Post-publication careers: follow-up expeditions reveal avalanches at Dyatlov Pass

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume

Having shed new light on an old mystery-how nine Russian mountaineers perished in the Urals in 1959-Alexander Puzrin and Johan Gaume got hooked. Three expeditions later it is clear that avalanches are not exceptional at Dyatlov Pass. ...

SPRINGERNATURE2022

The concept of the mobilized domain: how it can explain and predict the forces exerted by a cohesive granular avalanche on an obstacle

Christophe Ancey, Betty Sovilla, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Michael Lukas Kyburz

The calculation of the impact pressure on obstacles in granular flows is a fundamental issue of practical relevance, e.g. for snow avalanches impacting obstacles. Previous research shows that the load on the obstacle builds up, due to the formation of forc ...

2022

Three-dimensional and real-scale modeling of flow regimes in dense snow avalanches

Betty Sovilla, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Xingyue Li

Snow avalanches cause fatalities and economic loss worldwide and are one of the most dangerous gravitational hazards in mountainous regions. Various flow behaviors have been reported in snow avalanches, making them challenging to be thoroughly understood a ...

2021

A glacier-ocean interaction model for tsunami genesis due to iceberg calving

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Ming Gao

Dynamic glacier fracture and the subsequent generation and propagation of iceberg-induced tsunamis are reproduced using a unified numerical glacier-ocean model, in line with observations at the Eqip Sermia glacier in Greenland, as well as laboratory experi ...

SPRINGERNATURE2021

Micro-mechanical insights into the dynamics of crack propagation in snow fracture experiments

Jürg Schweizer, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Alec van Herwijnen, Grégoire Bobillier

Dry-snow slab avalanches result from crack propagation in a highly porous weak layer buried within a stratified and metastable snowpack. While our understanding of slab avalanche mechanisms improved with recent experimental and numerical advances, fundamen ...

NATURE RESEARCH2021

Crack propagation speeds in weak snowpack layers

Jürg Schweizer, Bertil Trottet, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Alec van Herwijnen, Grégoire Bobillier

For the release of a slab avalanche, crack propagation within a weak snowpack layer below a cohesive snow slab is required. As crack speed measurements can give insight into underlying processes, we analysed three crack propagation events that occurred in ...

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS2021

Mechanisms of slab avalanche release and impact in the Dyatlov Pass incident in 1959

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume

The Dyatlov Pass incident is an intriguing unsolved mystery from the last century. In February 1959, a group of nine experienced Russian mountaineers perished during a difficult expedition in the northern Urals. A snow avalanche hypothesis was proposed, am ...

SPRINGERNATURE2021

Computational micromechanics of porous brittle solids

Henning Löwe, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny, Stephanie Wang

Porous brittle solids evidence complex mechanical behavior, where localized failure patterns originate from mechanical processes on the microstructural level. In order to investigate the failure mechanics of porous brittle solids, we outline a general stoc ...

2021

Modeling snow and avalanches with the Material Point Method and finite strain elastoplasticity

Bertil Trottet, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny, Xingyue Li

Snow is a complex and fascinating material which can sustain stresses like a solid or flow like a fluid depending upon the load it is subjected to. The transition from solid to fluid state can lead to catastrophic snow slab avalanches. Modeling large defor ...

The Alliance of Laboratories in Europe for Education, Research and Technology2020

Microstructural controls of anticrack nucleation in highly porous brittle solids

Henning Löwe, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Jonas Ritter

Porous brittle solids have the ability to collapse and fail even under compressive stresses. In fracture mechanics, this singular behavior, often referred to as anticrack, demands for appropriate continuum models to predict the catastrophic failure. To ide ...

Nature Research2020

Decoupling the role of inertia, friction and cohesion in dense granular avalanche pressure build‐up on obstacles

Christophe Ancey, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Michael Lukas Kyburz

Understanding the physical processes involved in snow avalanche‐obstacle interaction is essential to be able to estimate the pressure exerted on structures. Although avalanche impact pressure has been measured in field experiments for decades, the underlyi ...

2020