• pyroclastic flow
• rapid granular flow
• powder snow avalanche

The objective of this thesis is to review the main modeling aspects of the physics of granular media and to develop a new computational tool useful to simulate rapid granular avalanches over three-dimensional natural terrains. Because such a tool does not exists yet, model validation represents a critical aspect of this work, which is envisaged through the comparison of numerical results with laboratory experiments and large-scale artificially triggered natural avalanches.