In mountainous regions, debris flows could danger both humans and infrastructure. Therefore,
several villages decided to install barriers, which save them by redirecting the flow, by
holding back the whole material or by separating the liquid portion from the solid portion to
decrease the energy of the flow. This paper focuses on flexible debris flow barriers, which
can be assigned to the last of these 3 variants. Due to their light weight and their simple
structure, the barriers tend to deform significantly when they are stressed by a debris flow.
Hence, models of those barriers must be calculated with nonlinear theories, because linear
theories entail a high amount of deviations from reality at systems with large deformations.
Accordingly, the main purpose of the paper is, to create a model of a flexible debris flow barrier,
which could be calculated with nonlinear methods in a simple way. In order to do that, all
the different elements of the barrier must be abstracted to rope models. The unknown properties
of this model then get calibrated in two different ways, with the aim of displaying one
individual system response in a right way each. After that, several load assumptions are set
on the model to evaluate the previously selected system responses with different stresses.
Regarding these calculations, the main focus is not to generate exact values for the system
responses but more the creation of a simple model, the following evaluation of the deviations
and the possibilities to align the model to reality.
«
In mountainous regions, debris flows could danger both humans and infrastructure. Therefore,
several villages decided to install barriers, which save them by redirecting the flow, by
holding back the whole material or by separating the liquid portion from the solid portion to
decrease the energy of the flow. This paper focuses on flexible debris flow barriers, which
can be assigned to the last of these 3 variants. Due to their light weight and their simple
structure, the barriers tend to de...
»