A scaling law for aeolian dunes on Mars, Venus, Earth, and for subaqueous ripples

By P. Claudin, Bruno Andreotti. 2006

281 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The linear stability analysis of the equations governing the evolution of a flat sand bed submitted to a turbulent shear flow predicts that the wavelength λ at which the bed destabilises to form dunes should scale with the drag length L drag = ρ s ρ f d . This scaling law is tested using existing and new measurements performed in water (subaqueous ripples), in air (aeolian dunes and fresh snow dunes), in a high pressure CO2 wind tunnel reproducing conditions close to Venus' atmosphere and in the low pressure CO2 Martian atmosphere (Martian dunes). The difficulty is to determine the diameter of saltating grains on Mars. A first estimate comes from photographs of aeolian ripples taken by the rovers Opportunity and Spirit, showing grains whose diameters are smaller than on Earth dunes. In addition we calculate the effect of cohesion and viscosity on the dynamic and static transport thresholds. It confirms that the small grains visualised by the rovers should be grains experiencing saltation. Finally, we show that, within error bars, the scaling of λ with Ldrag holds over almost five decades. We conclude with a discussion on the time scales and velocities at which these bed instabilities develop and propagate on Mars.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Earth-Surface Processes, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7b10d52eee077a4229fecbe8b97a77928de68671

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Citations in the corpus

On aeolian transport: Grain-scale interactions, dynamical mechanisms and scaling laws (2011, background): “It has been shown that the wavelength at which dunes form scales on qp/qf (Hersen et al., 2002; Claudin and Andreotti, 2006) (see Fig.”
The Physics of Sediment Transport Initiation, Cessation, and Entrainment Across Aeolian and Fluvial Environments (2020, methodology): “Models of the impact entrainment threshold ΘImEt [Claudin and Andreotti, 2006; Kok, 2010a] do not neglect captures of continuous rebounders and therefore take into account the entrainment of bed particles.”
Measurements of the aeolian sand transport saturation length (2008, methodology): “Under this assumption, a scaling law for the elementary size of dunes has been proposed (Claudin and Andreotti, 2006).”
An improved parameterization of wind‐blown sand flux on Mars that includes the effect of hysteresis (2010, methodology): “The result of this procedure is plotted in Figure 2a for Earth ambient conditions (as used by Kok and Renno [2009b]) and is compared with measurements of the impact threshold and simulations with COMSALT.”
Redistribution of particles across the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (2015, background): “Claudin & Andreotti (2006) proposed a scaling law between the ripple wavelength and the drag length, Ldrag Ldrag = d ρs ρg , (14) and showed it to be a good fit over five orders of magnitude on objects ranging from Mars to Venus to subaqueous ripples on Earth.”
The physics of wind-blown sand and dust (2012, background): “Owing to the large atmospheric density of Venus, a minimal dune size of the order of 20 cm is predicted from the scaling with drag (Claudin and Andreotti 2006).”