A Two-Threshold Model for Scaling Laws of Non-Interacting Snow Avalanches

Abstract

The sizes of snow slab failure that trigger snow avalanches are power-law distributed. Such a power-law probability distribution function has also been proposed to characterize different landslide types. In order to understand this scaling for gravity driven systems, we introduce a two-threshold 2-d cellular automaton, in which failure occurs irreversibly. Taking snow slab avalanches as a model system, we find that the sizes of the largest avalanches just preceeding the lattice system breakdown are power law distributed. By tuning the maximum value of the ratio of the two failure thresholds our model reproduces the range of power law exponents observed for land-, rock- or snow avalanches. We suggest this control parameter represents the material cohesion anisotropy.

arXiv commentaccepted PRL

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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Unified View of Avalanche Criticality in Sheared Glasses
• Memory in Self Organized Criticality
• Finite driving rate and anisotropy effects in landslide modeling
• Snow metamorphism: a fractal approach
• Stochastic equation of fragmentation and branching processes related to avalanches
• Modeling a fluid to solid phase transition in snow weak-layers. Application to slab avalanche release