Performances of Geosynthetics-Reinforced Barriers for Protection Against Debris Avalanches

Flow-like landslides, such as debris avalanches, are often dangerous for both structures and human life due to the high velocities and large runout distances. Artificial barriers are proposed to mitigate the landslide threats by reducing the flow velocity and the runout distance as well as diverting the flow towards lateral zones constrained by the barriers. A procedure is here proposed based on multiple steps. The first step focuses on the propagation of debris avalanche along a real topography through the meshless GeoFlow_SPH model in presence of one or more barriers. The second step deals with the behaviour of Deformable Geosynthetics Reinforced Barriers (DGRBs) under horizontal pressures, calculated with reference to literature formulations which include a dynamic component (dependent on landslide velocity at the impact stage), and a static component (height dependent). The time trend of impact pressure is computed from landslide volume and impulse theorem. The third step concerns the evaluation of the performances of the barrier under the impact. The main goal is to present such procedure and to evaluate the performances of DGRBs in: changing the area affected by landslide and dissipating impact energy through deformation and displacement mechanisms.