UC Santa Barbara

In this Letter, we experimentally investigate the collapse of initially dry granular media into water and the subsequent impulse waves. We systematically characterize the influence of the slope angle and the granular material on the initial amplitude of the generated leading wave and the evolution of its amplitude during the propagation. The experiments show that whereas the evolution of the leading wave during the propagation is well predicted by a solution of the linearized Korteweg-de Vries equation, the generation of the wave is more complicated to describe. Our results suggest that the internal properties of the granular media and the interplay with the surrounding fluid are important parameters for the generation of waves at low velocity impacts. Moreover, the amplitude of the leading wave reaches a maximum value at large slope angle. The runout distance of the collapse is also shown to be smaller in the presence of water than under totally dry conditions. This study provides a first insight into tsunamis generated by subaerial landslides at low Froude number.