Recently, the International Consortium on Landsides (ICL) selected the best papers of 2019 and 2020 (only one paper per year) from its sponsored journal《Landslides》. The selection takes into account the scientific level and quality of the paper (50%), the contribution to society (30%) and the quality of the figures (20%). The paper "Depositional mechanisms and morphology of debris flow: physical modeling (Vol. 16, No. 2, 315-332)" published by Gordon G. D. ZHOU and his team at the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, China was awarded “Landslides Best Paper Award 2019”.
In this paper, a systematic set of dimensionless groups (e.g., Froude number, Bagnold number, Savage number, and Friction number) are used to characterize the role of inertial stress, gravity, dispersive stress, viscous drag stress, and frictional stress in debris flows. Experimental results reveal the effects of particle gradation, water contents and channel slope on the deposition process of debris flow and the geomorphology of the deposition fan. The critical conditions, processes, and relevant mechanisms for particle size segregation in debris flow were discovered and explored. The work provides a theoretical basis for the construction of a multiphase dynamic model and the accurate simulation of the whole process of debris flows.
《Landslides》, founded by the International Landslide Association in 2004, is the TOP journal in the field of engineering geology and natural hazards. According to JCR classification, 《Landslides》ranks second among 35 engineering geology journals and ranks 32 among 184 earth science journals. This is the second time since 2004 that a Chinese scholar received this international award (in 2015, the team of Prof. Da Huang and Prof. Runqiu Huang received the award for the first time).
The winning papers and the list of previous winners can be found at:
http://iplhq.org/category/iplhq/award-and-honors/best-paper-award/?from=timeline&isappinstalled=0
