We consider a model introduced by Baker et al. [Phys. Rev. E 88, 042113 (2013)] of a single lattice random walker moving on a domain of allowed sites, surrounded by blocked sites. The walker enlarges the allowed domain by eroding the boundary at its random encounters with blocked boundary sites: attempts to step onto blocked sites succeed with a given probability and convert these sites to allo...

Land degradation is a great threat in the Heihe River Basin, located in the aridinland of northwestern China and land desertification is one of the main aspects ofenvironmental changes in this basin. Previous studies have focused on water resourceutilization and soil erosion, but the status of degraded land in the Heihe River Basin, suchas its distribution, extent and precise characteristics is...

The yielding behavior of a sheared Laponite suspension is investigated within a 1 mm gap under two different boundary conditions. No-slip conditions, ensured by using rough walls, lead to shear localization as already reported in various soft glassy materials. When apparent wall slip is allowed using a smooth geometry, the sample breaks up into macroscopic solid pieces that get slowly eroded by...

Depending on the amount of aeolian sediment input and dune erosion, dune size and morphology change over time. Since coastal foredunes play an important role in the Dutch coastal defence, it is important to have good insight in the main factors that control these changes. In this paper the temporal variations in foredune erosion and accretion were studied in relation to proxies for aeolian tran...

Many industries with avoidable fixed costs face competitive price instability problems in an attempt to maintain profitability. We designed an experimental environment where profitability is eroded by the addition of sunk and avoidable fixed costs. While we cannot reject the hypothesis that sunk fixed costs have no effect on prices, we observe a pattern of price signaling and responses which ma...

Accurate prediction of erosion thickness is essential for pipe engineering. The objective of the present paper is to study the temperature distribution in an eroded bend pipe and find a new method to predict the erosion reduced thickness. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations with FLUENT software are carried out to investigate the temperature field. And effects of oil inlet rate, oil in...

List of papers The present thesis is based on the following papers, which will be referred to by their Roman numerals.