Sand Dunes in Lab

Would physicists prefer their artificial-lighted labs to a study trip under the sun of the Marocan desert? Is
it because these “lab rats” fear for sunburns that they decided to study sand dunes at home and not in the
desert, as their colleagues always did? Why would they want to do that?

W
ell, simply to prove it is possible to do it. And also to
open new and more efficient ways to investigate sand du-
nes formation, evolution and deplacement mechanisms.

Indeed, many field observations have already been carried out.

They brought some knowledge about sand dunes, but it re-
mains limited by the difficulty of field investigation. And anyway,
even with getting better at experimental camps, it seems physi-
cists will never be able to learn as much as they need if they do
Barkans of Gypse, New Mexico,
not find another way to study sand dunes. They need a full de- United-States
termination of the different parameters and they like to play
with them to better understand how sand dunes form and move.

To understand the recent performance of the couple of innova-

tive French physicist in charge of creating these sand dunes in
labs, let us first explain why physicists need to understand sand
dunes. First of all, these “piles of sand” are related to economic,
ecological and social issues. As they move quite fas (from 1 me-
ter a year for the biggest and heaviest barkans to 100 meters a
year for the lightest), they often invade and damage the rare plan-
tation areas, the railways, and even worse, the villages. Moreo- Barkan performed in lab (view
ver, the studyingsand piles allows understanding better granu- from the top)
lar materials physics, fluid mechanic, and avalanche mechanisms

Different types of dunes: (e) is Saltation and reptation

the brakan one movements

For this lab experiment, the scientists decided to
start with the simplest dune shape which exists in
nature, the crescentic one, also called barkan. The-
re exists other types of sand dunes with different
and more complicated shapes, but since it is a first
time experiment, physicist told themselves “Let’s
start easy first!”. The barkans are formed under
specific conditions: the wind has to be constantly
intense and always blowing in the same direction.
When the wind is strong enough, it picks up grains
on the surface and pushes them forward. The ligh-
ter they are, the further they fly. For dunes forma
tion, the grains are considered quite heavy, it just
means they have to be heavy enough for the ac-
tion of their own weight to compensate their flight
at one point, so that they don’t go too far. This
movement of the grain is called saltation and the
length they fly before coming back to the ground
is the saltation length. There is a second phenome-
num which contributes to form sand dunes, which
is called the reptetion. When the saltated grains
go back to the earth, they give off their energy to
the grains they collide on the floor. These colli-
ded grains are given energy and fly forward for
a bit and induce again a chain reaction. Saltation
and Reptetion contribute to form sand dunes.
T aking into account of all the
existing scientific knowled-
ge about barkans, the Olivier
Dauchot’s research team went
for doing its own barkans, al-
though barkans are believed by
most scientists to have a mi-
nimal size of one meter high
and consequentely to not be
reductible to smaller lab scales. Experimental setup.

The experimental setup the stubborn physicists prepared is actually quite simple. They simulated a constant
mono-directional wind thanks to a ventilator (3) and a rectangular tube (1). In the blow of the wind, sand was in-
jected (5) in the box to modelize the saltationing grains where the sand dune lays and develops (2). They lighted
the sand dune thanks to a special modulated light (7) whose lighting depends on the slope it lights to. The sand
dune formation and evolution was shot by a CCD camera (6) located above the box at regular time intervals.

Different steps of the

T he speed of the wind and

the amount of sand injec-
ted are two parameters which
brakan formation. The
wind is blowing from the
upper left corner of every
need to be well tuned. On the picture.
(a) initial sand pile
one hand, the speed of the wind
(b), (c), (d) the sand dune
must be slow enough for the is barkan shaped but it
grains which lay on the floor of erodes fastly with time as
the box to be given a momen- it looses sand at the arms
tum to jump forward, but not of the crescent
too far. On the other hand the
speed the wind has to be fast This graph shows the
enough for every grain which flattening of the initial
moves forward to, once it co- sand pile to a barkan
mes back to the surface under shape. It represents the
its own weight, to impact other summit height fonction
grains sufficiently to induce of horizontal location.
the movement of more than One can observe the
one grain. The speed which erosion of the sand pile.
was used successfully for Every curve represent the
this experiment was set to be sand profile every two
minuts.
between 20cm/s and 25cm/s.
The minimum amount of sand
-ger sand dunes. The dunes appear to have the typical shape of the
for the sand dune to be able to
crecentic ones. However they erode faster than in nature. This is pro-
form was found to be between
bably due to the fact that there is a bigger sand loss in the experiment
a volume of 20 and 30 cm3.
than in nature. It could be because of a too narrow range of different
saltationning grains directions distribution. Thanks to this experiment,
a function for the profile evolution of a brakan has been found out ex-
It was shown in this experi-
perimentally, and it fits with previous on-fields experimental datas,
ment that it is actually possible
and agrees with theoretical models. This means that physicist tend to
to create sand dunes to smaller
be able to predict sand dunes movements and shape evolutions by cal-
scale, even when made of the
culation. However, some new ways to sand dunes physics were today
same sand grains than the big
opened, it will probably gives birth to a lot more advances in the field.
Gilles Grenot, M1CST