Activities at the WSL
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Approval test at testing site Walenstadt |
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| 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.
