4.1.2 Thermal erosion

Thermal weathering is caused by temperature changes causing small portions of the material to crumble and pile up on the bottom of an incline. The thermal weathering erosion ends the slopes of uniform angles. Thermal erosion is a relaxation process and is very easy to implement. At each time step the difference between the altitude tex2html_wrap_inline735 of each vertices of terrain and theirs neighbors to the defined constant talus angle T is compared (see Figure 9).

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Figure 9: One possible step of thermo erosion.

If the topical slope between vertex v and its neighbors u is greater than T then some part of material is moved from v to u. Amount of moved material specifies the constant tex2html_wrap_inline779

In the same way as in the case of the hydraulic erosion mentioned above we should care to the distribution to the all lower neighbors. The amount of moved material to one neighbor is proportional to the corresponding slope.



Ivo Marak - marak@sgi.felk.cvut.cz