Abstract
The characteristics of submarine debris flows and the generated turbidity as well as their relationship with the deposit thickness are discussed herein. There is a gap in our understanding of the processes in which a submarine debris flow and the overriding turbidity form seabed deposits and how the deposits relate to the parent landslide. The experimental program reported here studied subaqueous gravity flows of different clay-rich slurries in a flume. The flume results provide insight into the thickness of the slurry flows with the overriding turbidity clouds and the deposited sediments and lays groundwork for future studies. The thickness of the slurry head tends to decrease with increasing slurry clay content whereas the thickness of the turbidity overriding the slurry head tends to decrease with increasing clay content. Further, the thickness of the deposited layer measured a few seconds after termination of the slurry flow increases with clay content. Geometrically, the flume experiments represented flowing debris of a landslide from 50 m to 120 m water depths with a 600 m travelling distance and downstream velocities between 5 and 13.5 m/s.
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Acknowledgments
The work (ICG Contribution No. 229) presented here was supported by the Research Council of Norway through the International Centre for Geohazards (ICG) and the Leif-Eiriksson stipend awarded to the first author. Their support is gratefully acknowledged. We also extend our thanks to Statoil for funding the experimental program and to the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL) staff for their contributions to the experiments. The authors are thankful to Dr. Maarten Vanneste and Prof. Christopher Baxter for their review efforts and constructive comments.
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Zakeri, A., Si, G., Marr, J.D.G., Høeg, K. (2010). Experimental Investigation of Subaqueous Clay-Rich Debris Flows, Turbidity Generation and Sediment Deposition. In: Mosher, D.C., et al. Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences. Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3071-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3071-9_9
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