Modeling of the steady-state temperature field in lava flow levees

The rationale of lava flow deviation is to prevent major damage, and, among the possible techniques, the opening of the flow levees has often been demonstrated to be suitable and reliable. The best way to open the levees in the right point, in order to obtain the required effect, is to produce an explosion in situ, and it is then necessary to map with the highest precision the temperature field inside the levees, in order to design a safe and successful intervention. The levees are formed by lava flows due to their non-Newtonian rheology, where the shear stress is lower than the yield stress. The levees then cool and solidify due to heat loss into the atmosphere. In this work we present analytical solutions of the steady-state heat conduction problem in a levee using the method of conformal mapping for simple geometrical shapes of the levee cross-section (triangular or square). Numerical solutions are obtained with a finite-element code for more complex, realistic geometries. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.