Long submarine lava flows: Observations and results from numerical modeling

Lava penetrating water: Submarine lava flows around the coasts of Pico Island, Azores

[1] Bathymetry data collected with a multibeam echo sounder around Pico Island, Azores (Portugal), reveal a remarkable series of lava flows on the island’s shelf with a variety of pristine structures that suggest how lava behaves on entering water. Many flows are dendritic in plan view, some with channels and tumuli. Dendritic geometries are interpreted to arise from flow fronts repeatedly arre...

Numerical Simulation of Deposits from Submarine Sediment Gravity Flows

Numerical simulation of lava flows based on depth-averaged equations

Risks and damages associated with lava flows propagation (for instance the most recent Etna eruptions) require a quantitative description of this phenomenon and a reliable forecasting of lava flow paths. Due to the high complexity of these processes, numerical solution of the complete conservation equations for real lava flows is often practically impossible. To overcome the computational diffi...

Barriers to Protect Hilo from Lava Flows'

THE CITY OF HILa, on the island of Hawaii, lies on the flank of one of the world 's most active volcanoes, Mauna Loa. For more than a century the danger of destruction of the city by lava flows has been recognized. Old documents recount the apprehension with which Hilo residents watched the advance of the lava flows of 1852 and 1855. In 1881 concern was even greater, as the flow front crawled w...

Animating Lava Flows

Animating lava flowing down the slopes of a volcano brings several challenges: modeling the mechanical features of lava and how they evolve over time depending on temperature; computing, in a reasonable time, the interactions inside the flow, and between the flow and a complex terrain data-base; and lastly, rendering the visual aspect of the flow. The methods described rely on smoothed particle...