Abstract
People living in the lowlands around Mount Rainier, a stratovolcano of the Cascade mountains (USA), dwell on top of ancient landslide deposits. These deposits are due to mudflows descended from the top of the volcano in periods when the area was scarcely populated. However, Mount Rainier is still an active volcano; mudflows are certainly a current hazard. There are several other regions in the world at risk for volcanic mudflows, otherwise known as lahars. These flows are composed of a mixture of clay, silt, water, and coarser material like large blocks. They may be very fast and devastating. Wet mixtures of soils with clast size from clay to boulders are known with the generic name of debris flows. They are not necessarily volcanic but can derive from the failure of superficial soil in mountain environment, or even on flat areas in proximity of the sea.
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Notes
- 1.
In the following we assume the fluid to be incompressible.
- 2.
“Fluidized” means that water circulates between grains, so that grains are not in contact, see (←Sect. 3.2).
- 3.
There is a finite shear stress at the top due to the drag effect of air (or water for submarine mudflows). We neglect them here, but their role will be examined later for the case of submarine mudflows.
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De Blasio, F.V. (2011). Non-Newtonian Fluids, Mudflows, and Debris Flows: A Rheological Approach. In: Introduction to the Physics of Landslides. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1122-8_4
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