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Dune Formation

  • Conference paper
Traffic and Granular Flow’05

Summary

Dunes are ubiquitous and exist in many forms in deserts and along coasts. They are a consequence of the wind moving sand grains by a mechanism called “saltation”. In order to describe the formation and evolution of dunes one must understand the surface flux of sand. Using the equation of motion of turbulent air in the approximation of Jackson and Hunt for gentle hills one obtains a set of equations for dune motion. These equations reproduce very well field measurements. They also allow to study in detail the collision of dunes and the stability of dune fields since their solution is many orders of magnitude faster that real time observations.

(on sabbatical leave from ICP, University of Stuttgart)

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Campus do Pici, 60451-970, CE, Brazil

    Hans J. Herrmann

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  1. Hans J. Herrmann
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Str. 77, 50937, Köln, Germany

    Andreas Schadschneider

  2. Campus Virchow Klinikum Centrum für Unfall- und Wiederherstellungschirurgie, Charité, Augustenburger Platz 1, 13353, Berlin, Germany

    Thorsten Pöschel

  3. Institut für Verkehrsforschung, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Rutherfordstr. 2, 12489, Berlin, Germany

    Reinhart Kühne

  4. Physik von Transport und Verkehr, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Lotharstr. 1, 47048, Duisburg, Germany

    Michael Schreckenberg

  5. Theoretische Physik, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Lotharstr. 1, 47048, Duisburg, Germany

    Dietrich E. Wolf

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Herrmann, H.J. (2007). Dune Formation. In: Schadschneider, A., Pöschel, T., Kühne, R., Schreckenberg, M., Wolf, D.E. (eds) Traffic and Granular Flow’05. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-47641-2_5

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