Earth-lile flows driven by gravity
By: Catherine Meriaux
From: Instituto Dom Luiz
At: Complexo Interdisciplinar, Anfiteatro
[2010-01-27]
Flows on Earth are extremely diverse as they occur in media as varied as fluids, solids and granular media. Examples include lava flows, landslides and submarine turbidity currents.Yet many of these flows are driven by gravity. Viscous forces, friction or inertia then dissipate the gravitational potential energy.  This talk will discuss three examples that are:
- the gravitational instability of sheared mantle plumes,
- the collapse and quasi-static fall of granular columns and
- high-Reynolds-number gravity currents along a V-shaped valley.
Laboratory experiments and numerical modelling will illustrate the behaviour of the above flows.