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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 25: Franco-German Session on Granular Matter II

DY 25.1: Talk

Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 14:00–14:15, HÜL/S186

Avalanches of a granular medium reinforced with flexible fibres — •Baptiste Darbois Texier, Georges Gauthier, and Ladislas Wierzchalek — FAST, CNRS UMR 7608, University Paris-Saclay

Debris flows and landslides are catastrophic geophysical events that typically occur on sloped terrains and involve a large amount of granular materials in motion. At the laboratory scale, such events can be studied by observing avalanches of granular materials flowing down a slope and analyzing the factors that influence their initiation and cessation. In this study, we explore the effect of incorporating flexible fibres into granular media as a strategy to attenuate avalanches and stabilize granular piles. While fibre reinforcement has been shown to enhance the mechanical strength of soils, its influence on avalanche dynamics remains largely unexplored. We perform rotating-drum experiments at low rotation speeds using mixtures of grains and flexible fibres with varying volume fractions and aspect ratios. We measure the angles at which avalanches start and stop, as well as the relaxation dynamics following individual events. Increasing the fibre content or aspect ratio systematically raises both start and stop angles and broadens their distributions, accompanied by a marked rise in the number of small-amplitude avalanches. Analysis of relaxation curves further shows that fibres enhance dissipation, leading to slower, more gradual avalanche decay compared with pure grains. These findings provide quantitative evidence of the stabilizing effects of fibres on granular slopes and their role in dissipating energy during avalanches.

Keywords: Granular avalanches; Fibre reinforcement