Abstract
Barchan dunes migrate in swarms, with rich but not fully revealed self-stabilization mechanisms. The interaction between dunes is considered as one of the key reasons for these mechanisms. Contact-type interactions, known as collisions, have been widely studied, while non-contact-type interactions have received less attention. In this paper, a water tunnel experiment was performed to study the non-contact dune chasing. With the aid of numerical simulations, a general model was proposed to interpret the convergence of distance between two dunes chasing each other. The model consists of three factors: inter-dune repulsive vortex, embracing vortex downstream, and difference in dune mass. Then, we reported a scaling law, expressed as the relation between the normalized dune spacing and time, to describe the convergence of dune spacing, and develop a governing equation in the form of area summation to explain the violation of convergence by combining the above-mentioned three factors, both of which were verified experimentally. Our findings could help advance the understanding of the self-stabilization characteristics of dune swarms in nature.
Funder
Xinjiang Tianshan Talent Program
Shaanxi Key Science and Technology Innovation Team Project
China Scholarship Council
Subject
Condensed Matter Physics,Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes,Mechanics of Materials,Computational Mechanics,Mechanical Engineering
Cited by
1 articles.
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