Rockfalls

Activities at the WSL

Approval test at testing site Walenstadt

Simulation RAMMS-Rockfall

Our main interests/strengths lie on the protection against rockfall. The WSL runs a testing site in the old quarry Lochezen at Walenstadt in the canton St. Gallen. There, we realize the full-scale certification of flexible rockfall protection system. The hereby obtained data are additionally used to validate the developed simulation software for such barriers. The knowledge also allows the transfer of the load bearing principles to other loads, e.g. debris flows.

Additional experiments on rockfall galleries are designed to study the efficiency of different cushion layers and the interaction between the rock and the underlying concrete slab.

Finally we are developing a software module for rockfall trajectories using above data. It is part of the WSL research project RAMMS.

Activities of the research unit members in the field of rockfall

• Dr. Axel Volkwein, civil engineer
  Axel did his PhD on the simulation of flexible rockfall protection systems and now works on numerical simulations in the field of rockfalls.
  
• Werner Gerber, civil engineer
  Werner has more than twenty five years of experience in the field of rockfalls and -among other activities- now works on the development of RAMMS-Rockfall.
• Barbara Krummenacher, Environmental engineer
  Test monitoring, analysis & reports, quality management of accredited testing laboratory of rockfall protection systems.

Former members

• Dr. Corinna Wendeler, civil engineer
  Corinna wrote her PhD thesis from 2005 to 2008 on debris flow protection that has been awarded with the Planat research award 2008.
• Tor Lundström, civil engineer
  Until 2006 Tor was head of the WSL-project Tree stability and then did a PhD on the numerical modeling of trees at Uni Fribourg.
• Dr. Martin Jonsson, civil engineer
  Martin wrote his PhD thesis at the SLF from 2003 to 2006 on the quantification of the protection capacity of a single tree due to rockfall awarded by the Planat research award.

Published posters in the field of rockfalls

	Title / Description	Size
	2011_KalibrierungVonSteinschlagschutzsimulationen.pdf	4.3 MB
	2004_NumericalModellingOfFlexibleRockfallProtectionSystems.pdf	242 KB
	2006_DimensionierungVonSchutzbarrierenGegenMurgaenge.pdf	2.1 MB
	2006_FieldTestingAndNumericalModelingOfFlexibleDebrisFlowBarriers.pdf	406 KB
	2006_QuantificationOfRockfallMitigationByForestsUsingSimulations.pdf	4.0 MB
	2007_SpatialTrackingOfAFallingRockUsingInternalAccelerationSensors.pdf	551 KB
	2008_Large-ScaleTestingOfRockfallProtectionGalleries.pdf	312 KB
	2008_LoadModelForTheInteractionBetweenDebrisFlowsAndFlexibleBarriers.pdf	247 KB
	2008_PosteriorTrajectoryAnalysisOfAnArtificialInstrumentedBoulder.pdf	169 KB
	2009_EnduranceOfRockfallProtectionFences.pdf	546 KB