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DEM assessment of impact forces of dry granular masses on rigid barriers

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Abstract

In the design of sheltering structures/embankments for the mitigation of the risk due to rapid and long spreading landslides, a crucial role is generally played by the assessment of the impact force exerted by the flowing mass on the artificial obstacle. This paper is focused on this issue and in particular on the evaluation of the maximum impact force on the basis of the results obtained by performing an extensive numerical campaign by means of a 3D discrete element code, in which a dry granular mass is schematised as a random distribution of rigid spherical particles. The granular mass is generated just in front of the obstacle: its initial volume, velocity distribution, height, length and porosity are arbitrarily assigned, and the impact process is exclusively analysed. The initial conditions are varied to take a large variety of geometrical/mechanical factors, such as the initial front inclination, its height, the initial void ratio, the length of the impacting mass and the inter-particle friction angle, into consideration. A design formula is also proposed on the base of the obtained results and critically compared with the literature data.

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Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the Italian government within the framework of PON01_01869 Project “Tecnologie e Materiali Innovativi per la Difesa del Territorio e la Tutela dell’ambiente” and of the PRIN 2011 Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Francesco Calvetti & Claudio Giulio di Prisco

  2. School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences, NTU of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Emmanouil Vairaktaris

Authors
  1. Francesco Calvetti
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  2. Claudio Giulio di Prisco
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  3. Emmanouil Vairaktaris
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Correspondence to Francesco Calvetti.

Appendix

Appendix

To numerically asses the propagation wave velocity υ M within the soil mass, in case α = 90° and por = 0.45, the authors took into consideration the five instants of time t i indicated in Fig. 19a, analysed the corresponding snapshots relative to the force chains developed within the soil mass (in Fig. 19b, c those corresponding to t 1 and t 2 are reported, respectively) and calculated the \(\upsilon_{\text{M}}\) quantity as it follows:

$$\upsilon_{\text{M}} = \frac{{\Delta _{\text{w}} \ell }}{{\Delta _{\text{w}} t}}$$

where \(\Delta _{\text{w}} t\) is the difference between two time instants and \(\Delta _{\text{w}} \ell\) the length covered by the force wave in the considered time interval. By analysing different initial velocities, the authors obtained the same value for υ M since it obviously depends exclusively on the contact stiffness, the particle density and the initial porosity.

Fig. 19
figure 19

Assessment of the force wave velocity: a force versus time (α = 90°, \(\ell\) = 15 m), b force chains for the time instant 1 (b) and 2 (c)

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Calvetti, F., di Prisco, C.G. & Vairaktaris, E. DEM assessment of impact forces of dry granular masses on rigid barriers. Acta Geotech. 12, 129–144 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-016-0434-z

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