New Approach For Flexible Debris Flow Barriers
New Approach For Flexible Debris Flow Barriers
New Approach For Flexible Debris Flow Barriers
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Corinna Wendeler
Geobrugg AG, Romanshorn, Switzerland
Contact: [email protected]
Abstract
Flexible debris flow protection barriers consist of a combination of steel ropes and high tensile
steel wire nets following certain design criteria to provide a reliable protection against the sudden
impact of a debris flow with flow heights of up to 2 m and middle front velocities of around 10 m/s
in channelized river beds with widths and heights up to 30 m and 6 m. However, to go beyond the
above described typical application range special design is required. In the actual case a debris
retention basin with a height of 14 m and a width of 40 m was created. The contribution shows
the precedent research on flexible debris flow barriers consisting of field tests and laboratory
experiments, leading to the validated numerical simulations. Main focus then is the design process
of the special purpose barrier, its construction together with the experiences gathered within the
project leading to a not only remarkable but also elegant way to protection from impressive debris
hazards.
Keywords: Natural hazards; protection; debris flows; net systems.
1
IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
Figure 1. (left) components of a typical flexible debris flow barrier; (right) barrier in filled state at Illgraben,
Switzerland.
velocities of around 10 m/s in channelized river 7.43421, 46.66342) is prone to debris flows. Its
beds with widths and heights up to 30 m and 6 m. catchment area is 2.14 km2 with a river length of
The advantages of such flexible barriers are their 4.15 km and a highest elevation of 2104 m.a.s.l.
cost efficiency, reduced impact to the Table 1 lists the expected discharges according to
environment and their effectiveness. Previous the corresponding hazard map together with the
works [1] have optimized their arrangement of the damage potential of the expected debris flows.
components now providing a good basis for
Table 1. (a) Discharges of river Hüpach for
corresponding products regarding their design,
different annualities according to official natural
durability, and maintenance. Based on these
hazard map; (b) Potential damage for debris
results the manufacturers of protection barriers
flows.
developed and nowadays provide pre-designed
product palettes to protect against typical debris (a) Discharges for high water HQ and debris flows G
flows. The product design does not (yet) follow Discharge Discharge Peak
official standards, only first recommendations [2, Scenario without without discharge
3
3] and further scientific studies [4, 5] exist so far. [m/s ] bedload bedload debris flow
HQ30/G30 5.4 ~7.5 -
It was now the aim to realize a retention basin HQ100/G100 7.7 10.5 200
with a valley-side height of more than 13 m and a
HQ300/G300 9,9 13.5 350
top width of 40 m. Using the existing flexible
(b) Damage / risk due to debris flows
barrier standard types this would not be possible
G30 G100 G300
and heavy concrete works would have been
necessary. However, the combination of specially Damage [Mio CHF/event] 0.35 5.0 6.0
arranged strong steel cables, a concrete Fatalities / event 0 0.6 1.4
foundation along the river banks and a Damage risk [CHF/year] 12’000 50’000 20’000
typical/standard flexible ring net finally enabled Risk of fatalities per year 0 0.006 0.005
an astonishingly functioning flexible debris barrier.
In the following we describe the local situation for To now cope with the expected debris amounts
the planned barrier, the scientific background for different variants have been studied as for
a successful construction of a suitable flexible example several small barriers as cascades,
barrer and finally its implementation in the field. different locations for one large barrier, deflection
dam, widening of the rive channel etc. The final
2 Site conditions solution which was chosen is a combination of
two retention basins with capacities of 13’000 m3
Above the Swiss village Oberwil in the Simme (see Fig. 2) and 3’000 m3 whereas the large basin
valley the river Hüpach (WGS 84 (long/lat) should be formed using a flexible net barrier with
2
IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
trapezoid shape and a top width of 40 m in a barrier during normal high water times. The
height of 20 m. The area of the large basin is typical dimensions of such barriers cover widths of
accessible only through a small forest road. The 25 m and height of up to 6 m. The cables usually
relevant debris flow event parameters were a have a diameter of 22 mm and depending on the
volume of the first debris flow surge of 12’000 m3 site conditions several cables (each equipped with
with a peak discharge of 250 m3 /s. At that site this elongation elements) can be combined to a
corresponds to a flow height/depth of 2.5 m and a bundle.
front velocity of 9—10 m/s. The structure further
must withstand a second and third debris surge 3.2 Standard design procedures
with 8’500 m3 each.
Barriers following the above described scheme
have been extensively studied in [1] where full
scale barriers proved their functionality in the
field. In a second step the barriers have been
modelled using special purpose discrete element
software [7]. The successful validation of the
simulations based on the results of the field
installations now allow to develop different design
variants. The designs always have to be able to
withstand dynamic impact pressures during the
Figure 2. Planned 13’000 m3 retention basin with a complete filling process as described in [3].
flexible barrier at its front.
3.3 Special barrier structure
Main challenge for the design of a barrier that can
3 Barrier design be used for the situation described in section 2 are
their intended dimension with the resulting large
3.1 Standard flexible debris flow barriers loads on the net and the supporting structure.
A typical flexible debris flow barrier as shown in The concept now was to distribute enough
Figure 1 is installed within the river channel at the support ropes over the height of the barrier that
banks. Horizontal ropes are connected to the the loads on the net stay within a magnitude the
anchorage. They support the net. To provide the standard ring net can sustain and the anchor loads
necessary flexibility of the whole structure so- seem to be realistically transmittable to the river
called brake or elongation elements are inserted banks. The necessary diameter of the ropes then
that lengthen the support ropes under load by up is predetermined according to the width of the
to two meters. The edge cables prevent the debris barriers in different heights. Because of the – in
passing between net and banks. The top most so- this case – large barrier width, the cable forces
called wing cable has mainly two functions. First, reach values of up to 9’000 kN. This magnitude
to directly deliver support when the filled barriers made it impossible to use standard cable bundles.
pulls downward due to gravity and, second, to Instead, cables with diameters of 95 mm and
concentrate overflowing debris to the centre of more were used. However, suitable elongation
the barriers and river channel which avoids elements (see Fig. 1) were not available for such
erosion at the anchorage during a debris event. If cables. To still provide the necessary flexibility of
overflow of the barrier is expected an abrasion the structure the cables were arranges with given
protection has to be installed along the top edge sag following a normal line of a rope as shown in
of the barrier to avoid breakage due to Figure 3. Because of durability aspects fully locked
mechanical torture of the top ropes. A basal gap heavy duty cables where used.
at the bottom avoids an unwanted filling of the
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IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
Figure 3. Final design of the flexible debris flow barrier. Heavy duty steel cables with a predefined sag are
distributed over the height of the barrier and anchored in a concrete frame.
The cable ends are anchored in a reinforced Based on these simulations the relevant loads on
concrete frame, which again is secured to the the foundation can be determined. Figure 5
ground using drilled anchors. illustrates the evolution of the rope forces during
the filling process and Table 2 gives the decisive
3.4 Special barrier design loads for the single support cables reaching almost
9 MN. The net was continuously connected along
The design of the barrier components has been
resp. to the concrete girder. This connection also
done by computational simulation. A discrete
had to be designed. Figure 6 shows the evolution
element model has been stepwise filled over nine
of the lateral net anchorage over the barrier
load steps. The last modelled load case covered
height reaching up to 300 kN per anchor.
the situation when the barrier gets overflown by
subsequent debris surges. Figure 4 shows the Table 2. Decisive loads in kN for the anchorage of
filled barrier model and with the colours the the support cables. The x-direction of the
degree of utilization of the net structure. coordinate system directs in flow direction of the
debris flow.
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IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
Support cable 2
10000 Support cable 3
Support cable 4
8000
Support cable 5
6000 Support cable 6
Support cable 7
4000 Support cable 8
Support cable 9
2000 Support cable 10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Stepwise filling
4 Construction site
In this section the final installation in the field of
the planned barrier is shown. The main steps
illustrated in the following figures were
• Excavation works using a walking crane (Fig. 7)
• Drilling of anchorage (Fig. 8)
• Reinforcement of the concrete girder (Fig. 9). Figure 8. Installation of drilled anchors.
The concrete has been added step by step with
the stepwise installation of the steel cables.
• The ropes were delivered with pre-fabricated
rope lengths and rope end fitting into the rope
terminals on the girder (Fig. 10)
• Once all the support cables have been
mounted the net panels were installed (Fig. 11)
All site works were done during two summer
seasons. During the construction steady water
handling was mandatory.
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IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
5 Concluding remarks
In this contribution a completely new construction
in the field of flexible barriers against debris flows
has been presented. This building is the biggest
flexible debris flow barrier world wide. Although
mainly embedded in a normal engineering project
some innovations requiring preceding research
and structural optimization lead to an impressive
structure, that at the same time keeps the impact
on the environment on a minimum level.
The main idea that enabled the current structure
was the introduction of a pre-defined cable sag.
This measure provides the necessary flexibility of
the cables during a debris event even without
additional elongation element. Apart from the the
fact that these elements even do not exist for such
thick ropes.
The pre-planning of the project presented already
started in 2006 after detection of the endangered
zones. At that time, different variants were
studied but without consideration of net
structures. The final project with the solution
shown in Figure 12 finally finished with a total
Figure 10. Mounting of pre-fabricated ropes into
budget of 2.6 Mio Swiss Francs.
special rope sockets.
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IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
Acknowledgement
We as a team also want to say thank you to Richi
Weiss from Fatzer AG who supported us as good
as possible with the choice of heavy duty ropes
[8].
6 References
[1] Wendeler, C. Murgangrückhalt in Wildbächen
- Grundlagen zu Planung und Berechnung von
flexiblen Barrieren. Diss. ETH Nr. 17916,
2008.
[2] Kwan, J.S.H. & Cheung R.W.M. Suggestions
on Design Approaches for Flexible Debris-
resisting Barriers, incl. Appendix C Comments
and responses, Discussion Note DN 1/2012,
GEO, Hong Kong, 2012.
[3] Volkwein, A. Flexible debris flow barriers -
Design and application. WSL Ber. 18, 2014.
[4] Burden E., Low Z., Bianchi P., and Tan S.M.
Reinforced Concrete Dimensioning based on
Element Nodal Forces. ASCE Journal of
Structural Engineering. 2002; 120(6): 1718-
1731.
[5] Brighenti R, Segalini A, Ferrero A M Debris
flow hazard mitigation: A simplified analytical
model for the design of flexible barriers.
Computers and Geotechnics, 54; 1–15, 2013.
[6] Canelli L., Ferrero A. M., Migliazza M. &
Segalini, A. Debris flow risk mitigation by the
means of rigid and flexible barriers –
experimental tests and impact analysis. Nat.
Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 12, 1693–1699, 2012.
[7] Volkwein, A. Numerical simulation of flexible
rockfall protection systems. In: Proceedings
of the International Conference on
Computing in Civil Engineering, July 12-15,
2005, Cancun, Mexico
[8] Weiss, R. Gigantischer Hochwasserschutz im
Simmental, Brugg Flash, internal News from
Brugg Groupe, 2012.