Singing-sand avalanches without dunes

Abstract

Singing-sand dunes have attracted curiosity for centuries and are now the subject of controversy. We address here two aspects of this controversy: first the possible link between the frequency heard and the shear rate (for a gravity avalanche on a dune slip-face, scaling as 0:4√g/d, with d the 'mean' grain diameter), and second, the assumed necessity of a layered dune structure under the avalanche that acts as a resonator. Field recordings of singing dunes over the world reveal that they can present very different spectral characteristics: a dune with polydisperse grains produces a very broad and noisy spectrum, while a dune with sorted grains produces a well-defined frequency. Performing laboratory avalanches on a hard plate with singing-dune sand shows that there is no need for a dune below the sand avalanche to produce the singing sound, and a fortiori neither for the dune's layered structure nor for its particular sound transmission. By sieving the polydisperse grains, the same well-defined frequency is obtained to that of the dune with sorted grains, with the same diameter-frequency relation. The various frequencies heard in the field avalanches match the shear rates not calculated from the average size, but from the various peaks of the grain size distributions. © 2012. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.