Dune growth under multidirectional wind regimes
Abstract
Under unidirectional wind regimes, flat sand beds become unstable to produce periodic linear dunes, commonly called transverse dunes because their main ridges are oriented perpendicular to the air flow. In areas of low sediment availability, the same interactions between flow, transport and topography produce barchan dunes, isolated sand-pile migrating over long distances with a characteristic crescentic shape. For the last fifteen years, barchan dunes and the instability at the origin of transverse dunes have been the subject of numerous studies that have identified a set of characteristic length and time scales with respect to the physical properties of both grains and fluid. This is not the case for dunes developing under multidirectional wind regimes. Under these conditions, dune orientation is measured with respect to the direction of the resultant sand flux. Depending on the wind regime, dunes do not always line up perpendicularly to the resultant sand flux, but can also be at an oblique angle or even parallel to it. These oblique and longitudinal dunes are ubiquitous in all deserts on Earth and planetary bodies because of the seasonal variability of wind orientation. They are however poorly constrained by observations and there is still no complete theoretical framework providing a description of their orientation and initial wavelength. Here, we extend the linear stability analysis of a flat sand of bed done in two dimensions for a unidirectional flow to three dimensions and multidirectional flow regimes. We are able to recover transitions from transverse to oblique or longitudinal dune patterns according to changes in wind regimes. We besides give a prediction for the initial dune wavelength. Our results compare well to previous theory of dune orientation and to field, experimental and numerical data.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMEP41B1840G
- Keywords:
-
- 1824 Geomorphology: general;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1862 Sediment transport;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 5415 Erosion and weathering;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS;
- 5419 Hydrology and fluvial processes;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS