Scale Effect: Numerical Modeling of Net Barriers in Torrents

Overview & Synopsis

Some geohazards such as landslides and debris flow, which have already caused millions of dollars in damage and thousands of deaths and injuries each year, are regarded as a serious threat to humans and infrastructures. Therefore, studies on the design of structural mitigation measures and the related numerical simulation on barriers deformation against debris flow is of crucial importance in terms of engineering application. Motivated to clarify the mechanisms underlying rope nets deformation behavior and further establish a theoretical model for determining an appropriate material under experimental conditions, a series of numerical simulations using an extensive open-source framework called Yade DEM along with its discrete element method (DEM) is being performed by generating a rope net within certain physical properties under different loading conditions on the net nodes. To further understand this behavior, in this paper the scale effect and buckling effect are investigated by Bunkingham-pi theorem and plastic structure respectively. It is found that, a consistent impact of simple load on the net central deformation characteristics (e.g. absolute and relative displacement) under different scales are observed. And the efficiency of basic model including five dimensionless parameters to investigate the scale effect by similarity analysis is confirmable. And the net deformation of a chosen material (PSU) under a small scale (1:30) is in accordance with that of the theoretical material which is defined by basic model. In addition, it seems that, to improve the performance of net barrier against debris flow, the plastic flat region as shown in strain-stress curve should be larger than a certain value. Knowledge and evidence from this work might be utilized for the development and verifications of theoretical model and barriers structure design in the future.