Roll Waves in Mudflow Modeled as Herschel–Bulkley Fluids

Abstract

We develop a multilayer model to study roll waves in mudflow of Herschel–Bulkley fluids initiated by periodic and localized disturbance. Simulations are conducted of the temporal development of periodic roll waves and spatial development of wave packets due to localized disturbance. The results of the temporal development are expressed in terms of the power-law index, the relative plug-layer thickness, the Froude number, and the perturbation wavelength. Our simulation for the spatial development shows the roll waves led by a dominant front runner and followed by a quiescent tail, closely reproducing a well-known river-clogging phenomenon of the natural mudflow observed in the mountain rivers on mild slopes. The leading wave of the roll-wave packet, i.e., the front runner, grows in depth, velocity, celerity, and wavelength with distance from the localized disturbance. The front-runner wave amplitude depends on the distance from the localized disturbance, the power law index, the plug-layer thickness, and the Froude number. We calculated the front-runner’s wave amplitude due to a line source of disturbance in a 1D unidirectional development and the roll waves’ 2D development due to a point source. The initial nonlinear growth in the 2D front runner is a fraction of the 1D waves, but the increase in the wave amplitude with distance follows the same trend. We have also conducted a mesh refinement study to determine the convergence and accuracy. The present simulations using 64 layers have attained an accuracy within a 2% error.