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The role of stress concentration in slab avalanche release: reply to Dr R. Perla's letter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2017

R. A. Sommerfeld
R. A. Sommerfeld*
Affiliation:
U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, 240 West Prospect, Fort Collins, Colorado 80521, U.S.A.
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Type
Correspondence
Information
Journal of Glaciology , Volume 9 , Issue 56 , 1970 , pp. 283
Copyright
Copyright © International Glaciological Society 1970

Sir,

I am sorry if I have been unfair to Dr Haefeli's pioneering work. However, I don't think it is unfair to imply that Haefeli has been instrumental in inspiring much of the work in the shear failure of snow and particularly of internal layers. The Coulomb-Mohr criterion as proposed by Haefeli presupposes shear failure.

As Perla points out, the Coulomb-Mohr criterion is a good approximation for granular materials. Part of the point of my paper is that it may be more realistic to view snow not as a granular material but as a solid ceramic with the unique property of extremely variable density. This implies that a Griffith criterion would be more applicable.

5 January 1970