Experimental Determination of Constitutive Equations for Dense and Dry Avalanches: Presentation of the Set-Up and First Results

In order to study dry-snow avalanches, an intermediate scale device was built atthe “col du lac blanc”, a pass near the Alpe d'Huez ski resort, in the French Alps.It consists of a flow channel that can be artificially fed with snow through a hopper.The channel has been instrumented so as to measure height, normal and shear stressesat the bottom, and velocity profile within the flow. Through the variations in channelinclination and feeding rate, access to a wide range of slopes and heights is available.These measurements have been taken for a few dry snow flows at the end of the2001–2002 winter. The first results are presented here.