PALAGRAM

Gravity currents involving suspended particles are common features encountered in natural and industrial flows. The PALAGRAM project aims at characterizing the dynamics of particle laden gravity currents (PLGCs) from the local processes (erosion/deposition, turbulent dispersion) towards the macroscopic scale (rheology, turbulence modeling) through laboratory experiments and numerical modeling. Our project focuses on the influence of the concentration of particles over a large range of values, with a volume fraction (Phi) varying from 0.1% to 20%. We plan to provide a unified vision of PLGCs from dilute (Phi10%) systems corresponding to situations such as snow avalanches and submarine landslides respectively. The evolution of Phi over such a large range, affects local interaction processes, i.e. particle-particle and turbulence-particle interactions, which in turns modify dispersion processes in the current and mixing of the PLGC with the ambient fluid, and therefore the global dynamics of PLGCs. More specifically, the project will address two main scientific questions: what is the role of turbulence-particle interactions on erosion-deposition processes, dispersion of particles and mixing with the ambient fluid? What is the influence of the PLGC rheology (non-Newtonian) on the PLGC dynamics? A major technical barrier to achieve these goals is the great difficulty to measure velocities and particle concentration in dense suspensions given the very limited optical access. In order to overcome this bottleneck, we propose to develop advanced acoustic based and optical based (refractive-index matching with PIV/PTV, light-attenuation technique) measuring techniques during the first year. The rest of the project is constructed around a benchmark dataset of experimental observations collected from three complementary setups based at LEGI/IRSTEA, LEMTA and IMFT. Experimental setups are different since they focus on various flow regimes for PLGCs (Tasks 1,2,3). The scenarios considered in the project cover local processes in steady-state and unsteady PLGCs, and global observations in unsteady PLGCs in different dynamical configurations obtained from lock-exchange experiments, in two-dimensional and three-dimensional setups. This requires experimental expertise and metrologies which are available and complementary in the teams. The experimental results from all teams will contribute to the modelling of the rheology of PLGCs associated with the suspension of particles, of the contribution of particles to turbulent dispersion, and of boundary effects (friction, mass exchange, momentum flux). The generic modelling aspects obtained will be implemented in a numerical tool developed at LEGI, in order to run numerical simulations that can be tested against the experimental results (Task 4). The consortium of the PALGRAM project allows to gather various skills on fluid-particle flows and their modeling, dedicated to a similar situation in order to improve our knowledge and the impact of these complex flows.