NHESS Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences NHESS Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 1684-9981 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/nhess-9-1189-2009 Design of reinforced ground embankments used for rockfall protection Ronco C. 1 Oggeri C. 1 Peila D. 1 Dept. of Land, Environment and Geo-technology, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy 17 07 2009 9 4 1189 1199 Copyright: © 2009 C. Ronco et al. 2009 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/9/1189/2009/nhess-9-1189-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/9/1189/2009/nhess-9-1189-2009.pdf

The prediction of the effects of rockfall on passive protection structures, such as reinforced ground embankments, is a very complex task and, for this reason, both full-scale tests and numerical dynamic modelling are essential. <br><br> A systematic set of numerical FEM models, developed in the dynamic field, has been implemented in this work to evaluate the conditions of an embankment that has been subjected to the impact of rock blocks of various sizes at different speeds. These analyses have permitted design charts to be obtained. Furthermore, a simplified analytical approach, based on an equilibrium analysis, has been proposed and its results are compared with numerical data in order to assess its feasibility. A good correspondence between the results has been obtained.

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