Detecting arrest in snow avalanche simulations : interplay between rheology, topography and numerical diffusion
Abstract
The ability to objectively define flow arrest in numerical simulations of snow avalanches is of paramount importance for engineering applications. In this study, we investigate the stoppage mechanisms of simulated avalanches, focusing on the interplay between numerical diffusion, topography complexity, and snow rheology. We use a depth-averaged flow model including a modified Voellmy law with cohesion and a physically-based yielding criterion. The simulation results are found to be sensitive to the mesh resolution, until the cell width is less than 20% of the characteristic flow depth, typically. The yielding criterion is sufficient to unambiguously define flow arrest for highly cohesive avalanches, even on complex topography with feature sizes comparable to the typical flow depth. In contrast, for weakly-cohesive avalanches on complex topography, a fully static state is never reached, owing to the persistence of artificial non-zero velocities due to numerical diffusion. The mechanisms by which numerical diffusion induces such spurious velocities are studied and are shown to be enhanced by topography complexity. We hence investigate several global and local arrest criteria applied during post-processing, complementing the yielding criterion. Most of these criteria require setting ad-hoc thresholds, the values of which are influenced by numerical diffusion. Tracking the evolution to a static state of the highest point of the flow material in the runout zone appears to offer an objective and practical solution to indicate when the model enters a numerical-diffusion-dominated regime and simulations can reasonably be terminated, although this approach introduces an additional challenge in defining a representative runout zone.
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BibTeX
@misc{denisenko2026detecting,
title = {{Detecting arrest in snow avalanche simulations : interplay between rheology, topography and numerical diffusion}},
author = {Danila Denisenko and Saoirse Robin Goodwin and Thierry Faug and Guillaume Chambon},
howpublished = {HAL},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05594066v2},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Detecting arrest in snow avalanche simulations : interplay between rheology, topography and numerical diffusion
AU - Danila Denisenko
AU - Saoirse Robin Goodwin
AU - Thierry Faug
AU - Guillaume Chambon
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - HAL
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05594066v2
AB - The ability to objectively define flow arrest in numerical simulations of snow avalanches is of paramount importance for engineering applications. In this study, we investigate the stoppage mechanisms of simulated avalanches, focusing on the interplay between numerical diffusion, topography complexity, and snow rheology. We use a depth-averaged flow model including a modified Voellmy law with cohesion and a physically-based yielding criterion. The simulation results are found to be sensitive to the mesh resolution, until the cell width is less than 20% of the characteristic flow depth, typically. The yielding criterion is sufficient to unambiguously define flow arrest for highly cohesive avalanches, even on complex topography with feature sizes comparable to the typical flow depth. In contrast, for weakly-cohesive avalanches on complex topography, a fully static state is never reached, owing to the persistence of artificial non-zero velocities due to numerical diffusion. The mechanisms by which numerical diffusion induces such spurious velocities are studied and are shown to be enhanced by topography complexity. We hence investigate several global and local arrest criteria applied during post-processing, complementing the yielding criterion. Most of these criteria require setting ad-hoc thresholds, the values of which are influenced by numerical diffusion. Tracking the evolution to a static state of the highest point of the flow material in the runout zone appears to offer an objective and practical solution to indicate when the model enters a numerical-diffusion-dominated regime and simulations can reasonably be terminated, although this approach introduces an additional challenge in defining a representative runout zone.
ER -