The opening of the course is devoted to highlighting the striking differences between (dry) granular flows and granular suspensions.

The scope of the course is the investigation of the purely hydraulic problem, thus the liquid is water while particles are in general coarse and inert (non-colloidal and non-adhesive) and, therefore, only their mechanical properties are considered. the particle concentration), the relative velocity of particles and the electro-chemo-mechanical properties of the mixture components. Indeed, the presence of a liquid, which saturates the interstices between grains, formidably expands the parameter space of granular flows, the mixture exhibiting behaviours typical of either viscous shear-thinning fluids or dense granular flows depending essentially on the average distance between solid particles (i.e. Among geophysical phenomena, the course focuses on water-saturated sub-aerial and sub-aqueous debris flows, hyper-concentrated flows, underwater turbidity currents, creeping and fluid-like movements of soil in landslides as well as on the sediment transport in rivers and along ocean shores, both at the bed and in suspension.

The quest is mainly motivated by the growing scientific and engineering interest in geophysical flows as a consequence of the climate change and the severe impact of hydro-geological catastrophic events on socio-economic activities. The course is an exploration of the recent theoretical, experimental and numerical advancements in the modelling of non-Brownian granular suspensions.

Physics phenomena 8th