2D DEM model of sand transport with wind interaction

Abstract

The advance of the dunes in the desert is a threat to the life of the local people. The dunes invade houses, agricultural land and perturb the circulation on the roads. It is therefore very important to understand the mechanism of sand transport in order to fight against desertification. Saltation in which sand grains are propelled by the wind along the surface in short hops, is the primary mode of blown sand movement [1]. The saltating grains are very energetic and when impact a sand surface, they rebound and consequently eject other particles from the sand bed. The ejected grains, called reptating grains, contribute to the augmentation of the sand flux. Some of them can be promoted to the saltation motion. We use a mechanical model based on the Discrete Element Method to study successive collisions of incident energetic beads with granular packing in the context of Aeolian saltation transport. We investigate the collision process for the case where the incident bead and those from the packing have identical mechanical properties. We analyze the features of the consecutive collision processes made by the transport of the saltating disks by a wind in which its profile is obtained from the counter-interaction between air flow and grain flows. We used a molecular dynamics method known as DEM (soft Discrete Element Method) with a initial static packing of 20000 2D particles. The dilation of the upper surface due to the consecutive collisions is responsible for maintaining the flow at a given energy input due to the wind. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.