Dry granular avalanche impact force on a rigid wall of semi-infinite height

The present paper tackles the problem of the impact of a dry granular avalanche-flow on a rigid wallof semi-infinite height. An analytic force model based on depth-averaged shock theory is proposed to describethe flow-wall interaction and the resulting impact force on the wall. Provided that the analytic force modelis fed with the incoming flow conditions regarding thickness, velocity and density, all averaged over a certaindistance downstream of the undisturbed incoming flow, it reproduces very well the time history of the impactforce actually measured by detailed discrete element simulations, for a wide range of slope angles.