Effects of water on the stability of the sandpile model: Interplay between stabilization and saturation

Abstract

For better realistic modeling, Cellular Automata (CA)-based models of granular formations have to account for surface characteristics, as they have been shown to affect the overall stability. We present here the results of a modified Bak-Tang-Wisenfeld (BTW) sandpile model that incorporates water content and exponential drying. Water introduces stability increase based on overall statistics of avalanche sizes, resulting in a power-law distribution with scaling exponent -1.430 ± 0.037  . Model results show that frequent large events occur when the whole granular pile reaches saturation levels of water and mass together with constant drying, signifying that drying may in fact induce a destabilizing effect on actual landforms.