The dynamics of sandpiles with a sheared flow

Sheared wind on a sandpile model produces a decorrelation of transport events and eliminates events with scale lengths on the order of the box size. The effective diffusion coefficient changes its asymptotic behavior from D-eff alpha x(alpha), with alpha close to 1, to D-eff alpha x(0). These asymptotic limits are consistent with analytical calculations based on the Burgers equation and have implications for SOC theory as a paradigm for turbulent transport.