Mathematical models for geophisical mass flows

Abstract

In this thesis we took in consideration the problem of the mathematical modeling for phenomena concerned with the so called "hazardous geophysical mass flows", such as debris flows, avalanches, pyroclastic flows. We performed a critical review of the best known models, such as the Savage-Hutter model, the Iverson models and the two-fluid model of Pitman-Le. As for the models of Savage-Hutter and Iverson is trivial to verify the conditions of hyperbolicity, it was a challenging task to analyze the hyperbolicity of the Pitman-Le model. We studied the propagation of discontinuity waves in these models.