Development of instrument for measuring snow weak layer mechanical properties

Laboratoire(s)/équipe(s) du LabEx OSUG impliqué(e.s) : IRSTEA (UR ETGR), CEN (CNRM - GAME), LGGE (CNRS UJF)
Porteur du Projet : Podolskiy, Evgeny A.

Snow avalanche release remains poorly understood and forecasted, and presents a serious issue for inhabited mountain regions ( 15% of Europe‟s and 6% of Earth‟s land may be considered as avalanche prone areas). As a result of poorly defined constitutive laws describing mechanical behavior of different types of snow weak layers and a lack of adequate field instruments for measurement of these properties, the connection between failure at the micro-scale and slab detachment at the macro-scale is missing. To contribute to the development of a mechanical model of fracture leading to avalanche initiation, which could be employed for avalanche release research for hazard mapping and real-time risk management, it is necessary to develop a new instrument to measure the failure behavior of weak layers and their relationship to slope-scale instability. Our objective is to develop and test this fundamental and currently missing technique.

Montant accordé : 10 800 € en 2013

Bilan :