Related papers: Elongation and stability of a linear dune

The dune skeleton model is a reduced model to describe the formation process and dynamics of characteristic types of dunes emerging under unidirectional steady wind. Using this model, we study the dependency of the morphodynamics of…

Barchans are crescentic dunes propagating on a solid ground. They form dune fields in the shape of elongated corridors in which the size and spacing between dunes are rather well selected. We show that even very realistic models for…

Sand-moving winds blowing from a constant direction in an area of high sand availability form transverse dunes, which have a fixed profile in the direction orthogonal to the wind. Here we show, by means of a linear stability analysis, that…

We review the main processes that drive the morphodynamics of dunes, i.e. their growth in height, migration and elongation, and emphasise the contribution of experiments to the understanding of these mechanisms. The main control parameters…

It has been observed that the direction in which a sand dune extends its crest line depends on seasonal variation of wind direction; when the variation is small, the crest line develops more or less perpendicularly to the mean wind…

We model formation and evolution of transverse dune fields. In the model, only the cross section of the dune is simulated. The only physical variable of relevance is the dune height, from which the dune width and velocity are determined, as…

In nature, barchan dunes typically exist as members of larger fields that display striking, enigmatic structures that cannot be readily explained by examining the dynamics at the scale of single dunes, or by appealing to patterns in…

The simplest type of dune is the transverse one, which propagates with invariant profile orthogonally to a fixed wind direction. Here we show numerically and with a linear stability analysis that transverse dunes are unstable with respect…

We demonstrate the feasibility of studying dunes in a laboratory experiment. It is shown that an initial sand pile, under a wind flow carrying sand, flattens and gets a shape recalling barchan dunes. An evolution law is proposed for the…

Aeolian sand dunes originate from wind flow and sand bed interactions. According to wind properties and sand availability, they can adopt different shapes, ranging from huge motion-less star dunes to small and mobile barchan dunes. The…

Barchans are crescent-shaped sand dunes forming in aride regions with unidirectional wind and limited sand supply. We report analytical and numerical results for dune shapes under different environmental conditions as obtained from the…

Barchans are isolated mobile dunes often organized in large dune fields. Dune fields seem to present a characteristic dune size and spacing, which suggests a cooperative behavior based on dune interaction. In Duran et al. (2009), we propose…

Barchan dunes are found where sand availability is low and wind direction quite constant. The two dimensional shear stress of the wind field and the sand movement by saltation and avalanches over a barchan dune are simulated. The resulting…

Sand dunes are ubiquitous in nature, and are found in abundance on Earth and other planetary environments. One of the most common types are crescent-shaped dunes known as barchans, whose mid-line could be assumed to behave as 2D dunes. In…

Almost fifty years of investigations of barchan dunes morphology and dynamics is reviewed, with emphasis on the physical understanding of these objects. The characteristics measured on the field (shape, size, velocity) and the physical…

Dune fields are commonly associated with periodic patterns that are among the most recognizable landscapes on Earth and other planetary bodies. However, in zones of limited sediment supply, where periodic dunes elongate and align in the…

To analyze theoretically the stability of the shape and the migration process of transverse dunes and barchans, we propose a {\it skeleton model} of 3D dunes described with coupled dynamics of 2D cross-sections. First, 2D cross-sections of…

The dependence of the barchan dune dynamics on the size of the grains involved is investigated experimentally. Downsized barchan dune slices are observed in a narrow water flow tube. The relaxation time from an initial symmetric triangular…

Crescent shaped barchan dunes are highly mobile dunes that are usually presented as a prototypical model of sand dunes. Although they have been theoretically shown to be unstable when considered separately, it is well known that they form…

In zones of loose sand, wind-blown sand dunes emerge due the linear instability of a flat sedimentary bed. This instability has been studied in experiments and numerical models but rarely in the field, due to the large time and length…