Effect of the Soil Organic Content on Slurries Involved in Mudflows

AbstractThe effect of the soil organic content on the stability of a soil involved in a rapid mud flow is here experimentally investigated. The soil is collected form a site where a catastrophic landslide took place (Cervinara – AV) and it is chemically treated to selectively remove different aliquots of its original organic carbon. In particular, The Dissolved Organic Carbon (i.e. the carbon soluble in water)results the 6% of the soil organic carbon and it is removed with a mild chemical treatment to obtain the DOC 6 sample, the 77% and 89% of the Total Organic Carbon (i.e.the pool of oxidizable soil organic carbon)is removed with a strong chemical treatment to obtain the TOC 77 and TOC 89 sample, respectively. The stabilizing effect of the organic carbon is investigated by following the evolution of the particle size distribution of soils induced by a mild mixing of diluted slurries and we showed that the particle size distribution of the original soil sample is unaffected by the slurry mixing, while those of DOC 6,TOC 77 and TOC 89 evolve during time, revealing the breakup of soil aggregates. Our findings highlight the stabilizing effect of SOC in the investigated liquid slurries and, furthermore, they suggest that the organic carbon quality, more than its quantity, plays a crucial role in the soil stability. Indeed, it is enough to remove the Dissolved Organic Carbon to register a soil disaggregation process comparable to that observed for TOC 77 and TOC 89 samples. This suggests that Dissolved Organic Carbon is the fundamental organic fraction stabilizing the slurry microstructure

The microstructural change causing the failure of the Cox-Merz rule in Newtonian suspensions: experiments and simulations

Newtonian non-Brownian concentrated suspensions show a mismatch between the steady state and the complex viscosity, whatever the strain amplitude imposed in the oscillatory flow. This result is counterintuitive in the two extreme cases of vanishing strain amplitude and very large one. In the first case, the oscillatory flow should not be able to alter the steady microstructure, as well as in the other opposite limit for which the strain amplitude is so high that the oscillatory flow resembles a steady flow reversal. If the microstructure is not altered with respect to the steady one, similarly the complex viscosity should be equal to the steady one. We here investigate experimentally and numerically the origin of the viscosities mismatch at any imposed strain amplitude. We focus on the first two or three cycles of oscillations and different particle concentrations. Experimental and numerical results agree and allow to prove that for intermediate amplitudes, the oscillatory shear induces the breakage of particle clusters and the microstructure modifies so to minimise particle collisions. For very small strain amplitudes, the oscillatory shear only induces the rotation of few couples of touching particles and the complex viscosity results slightly smaller than the steady one, while for very large strains, the oscillatory flow reshuffles the particles inducing a microstructure as clustered as the steady state one but with a different angular distribution function. We show that the vast majority of the microstructure rearrangement takes place in the first half cycle of oscillation

Global, regional, and national burden of disorders affecting the nervous system, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BackgroundDisorders affecting the nervous system are diverse and include neurodevelopmental disorders, late-life neurodegeneration, and newly emergent conditions, such as cognitive impairment following COVID-19. Previous publications from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factor Study estimated the burden of 15 neurological conditions in 2015 and 2016, but these analyses did not include neurodevelopmental disorders, as defined by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11, or a subset of cases of congenital, neonatal, and infectious conditions that cause neurological damage. Here, we estimate nervous system health loss caused by 37 unique conditions and their associated risk factors globally, regionally, and nationally from 1990 to 2021.MethodsWe estimated mortality, prevalence, years lived with disability (YLDs), years of life lost (YLLs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), with corresponding 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs), by age and sex in 204 countries and territories, from 1990 to 2021. We included morbidity and deaths due to neurological conditions, for which health loss is directly due to damage to the CNS or peripheral nervous system. We also isolated neurological health loss from conditions for which nervous system morbidity is a consequence, but not the primary feature, including a subset of congenital conditions (ie, chromosomal anomalies and congenital birth defects), neonatal conditions (ie, jaundice, preterm birth, and sepsis), infectious diseases (ie, COVID-19, cystic echinococcosis, malaria, syphilis, and Zika virus disease), and diabetic neuropathy. By conducting a sequela-level analysis of the health outcomes for these conditions, only cases where nervous system damage occurred were included, and YLDs were recalculated to isolate the non-fatal burden directly attributable to nervous system health loss. A comorbidity correction was used to calculate total prevalence of all conditions that affect the nervous system combined.FindingsGlobally, the 37 conditions affecting the nervous system were collectively ranked as the leading group cause of DALYs in 2021 (443 million, 95% UI 378–521), affecting 3·40 billion (3·20–3·62) individuals (43·1%, 40·5–45·9 of the global population); global DALY counts attributed to these conditions increased by 18·2% (8·7–26·7) between 1990 and 2021. Age-standardised rates of deaths per 100 000 people attributed to these conditions decreased from 1990 to 2021 by 33·6% (27·6–38·8), and age-standardised rates of DALYs attributed to these conditions decreased by 27·0% (21·5–32·4). Age-standardised prevalence was almost stable, with a change of 1·5% (0·7–2·4). The ten conditions with the highest age-standardised DALYs in 2021 were stroke, neonatal encephalopathy, migraine, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, diabetic neuropathy, meningitis, epilepsy, neurological complications due to preterm birth, autism spectrum disorder, and nervous system cancer.InterpretationAs the leading cause of overall disease burden in the world, with increasing global DALY counts, effective prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation strategies for disorders affecting the nervous system are needed

Modelling the flow of a second order fluid through and over a porous medium using the volume averages. II. The stress boundary condition

In this paper, a stress boundary condition at the interface between a porous medium saturated by a viscoelastic fluid and the free viscoelastic fluid is derived. The volume averages are used to upscale the problem. The boundary condition is obtained on the assumption that the free fluid stress is transferred partially to the fluid within the porous medium and partially to the solid skeleton. To this end the momentum balance on the solid skeleton saturated by the viscoelastic fluid is derived and a generalised Biot's equation is obtained, which is coupled with the generalised Brinkman's equation derived in Part I of the paper. They together state that the whole stress carried by the porous medium, sum of that of the fluid and that of the solid skeleton, is not dissipated. The boundary condition here derived does not show any stress jump and as in Part I, to emphasize the effect of elasticity, a second order fluid of Coleman and Noll is considered as viscoelastic fluid. Also the stress boundary condition at the interface between a homogeneous solid and the porous medium saturated by the viscoelastic fluid is obtained

Analisi di alcuni problemi termici e fluidodinamici relativi ai ghiacciai dell'Antartide

Dottorato di ricerca in ingegneria chimica. 8. ciclo. Comitato scientifico G. Astarita, S. Crescitelli e G. Marrucci. Relatore G. AstaritaConsiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Biblioteca Centrale - P.le Aldo Moro, 7, Rome; Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale - P.za Cavalleggeri, 1, Florence / CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle RichercheSIGLEITItal

Deformation of a non-newtonian ellipsoidal drop in a non-newtonian matrix: extension of Maffettone–Minale model

A phenomenological model for the dynamics of a buoyancy free non-Newtonian drop immersed in a non-Newtonian fluid subjected to a flow field with an arbitrary uniform velocity gradient is presented. The model is based on the assumption that the drop deforms while remaining ellipsoidal and the volume is preserved. The analytical limits of Taylor for both small deformations and high viscosity ratios are exactly recovered. Also, the affine deformation limit is recovered under the appropriate conditions. In addition, the second-order theory for non-Newtonian systems [F. Greco, J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 107 (2002) 111–131] is also recovered to within a minor term. As a consequence, the major and minor drop semiaxes, together with the drop angle, properly degenerate into the analytical limits, while the third semiaxis differs only slightly from the exact theory. Model predictions are compared with experimental data for both Newtonian and non-Newtonian systems, throughout a significant range of parameters values

Modelling the flow of a second order fluid through and over a porous medium using the volume averages. I. The generalized Brinkman's equation

In this paper, the generalized Brinkman's equation for a viscoelastic fluid is derived using the volume averages. Darcy's generalised equation is consequently obtained neglecting the first and the second Brinkman's correction with respect to the drag term. The latter differs from the Newtonian drag because of an additional term quadratic in the velocity and inversely proportional to a "viscoelastic" permeability defined in the paper. The viscoelastic permeability tensor can be calculated by solving a boundary value problem, but it must be in fact experimentally measured. To isolate the elastic contribution, the constitutive equation of the second order fluid of Coleman and Noll is chosen because, in simple shear at steady state, second order fluids show a constant viscosity and first and second normal stress differences quadratic in the shear rate. The model predictions are compared with data of the literature obtained in a Darcy's experiment and the agreement is good

Numerical predictions of the viscosity of non Brownian suspensions in the semidilute regime

The viscosity of a non-Brownian suspension in simple shear cannot be theoretically predicted in the limit of the semidilute approximation, since it depends on the initial configuration. Batchelor and Green [J. Fluid Mech. 56, 401-427 (1972)] proved that the suspension viscosity can be expressed in power series of the solid volume fraction and the second order coefficient, b, resulted undetermined. On the contrary, experimentally Pasquino [J. Rheol. 52, 1369-1384 (2008)] obtained a single steady state and estimated the value of b. We here numerically show that laminar mixing is able to induce a unique steady state also in the semidilute regime, since it is effective to break the closed orbits that may occur in these suspensions. To this end, we investigated the effect of the initial conditions on the steady state starting from seven different configurations ranging from the fully uniform and ordered one to the agglomerated one, passing through different random distributions. We, finally, numerically predict, via Stokesian dynamics, the coefficient b for the viscosity of a monolayer of rigid spherical particles suspended in a Newtonian fluid, undergoing simple shear flow obtaining b = 6.5 in a good agreement with both the data of Pasquino and the theoretical predictions obtained under the hypothesis of absence of closed orbits [Wilson and Davis J. Fluid. Mech. 421, 339-367 (2000)]. It is also shown that the Cox-Merz rule is fulfilled by the suspensions that we have numerically studied, i.e., up to a volume fraction of about 0.17. (C) 2011 The Society of Rheology. [DOI: 10.1122/1.3630943