Science & Technology Review. 2007, 25(0714): 22-27.
The mechanism of wind-blown sand movement serves a basis in understanding wind erosion, dust weather (including dust storm) and blown sand disaster, and also a basis in effectively preventing the sand related disasters. It is closely related to many scientific problems such as the multi-scale problem, the coupling of multi fields, randomness, non-linearity, the effect of scale as well as complex system. These problems are also among hotspots in scientific frontline. This paper briefly reviews the research work on mechanism of wind-blown sand movement, and focuses on recent studies of the research group of environmental mechanics on wind blown sand movement in Lanzhou University. They include the basic laws governing the particle charge and electric field in the blown sand flux, the effects of sand electrification on telecommunication, theoretical simulation of the evolution process of windblown sand flux, theoretical analysis on the effective size of blown sand fixing structures, and the main features of Aeolian sand ripples.
