Air drag controls the runout of small laboratory landslides.

ABSTRACT

Laboratory granular landslides are smaller-scale, simplified, yet well-controlled versions of larger and often tragic natural landslides. Using systematic experiments and scaling analysis, we quantify the influence of grain size, fall height, and landslide volume on runout distance. We also determine the minimum landslide size required to observe this scaling, which we find is set by a combination of air drag, grain size, and fall height.