Performance of High Strength Rock Fall Meshes: Effect of Block Size and Mesh Geometry

In rockfall science, the bullet effect refers to the perforation of a rockfall mesh by a small block traveling at high speed. To date, there is still no comprehensive experimental data set investigating the underlying mechanisms of such effect. The bullet effect illustrates the fact that the capacity of a rockfall mesh depends on the size and speed of the impacting block. This paper presents the results of an experimental study on the effect of block size and mesh geometry (aperture and wire diameter) on the mesh performance. The results clearly show that the amount of energy required to perforate the mesh drops as the blocks get smaller. They also suggest that the mesh performance reaches a maximum and reduces to zero when the mesh cannot sustain the static load imposed by very large blocks. The outcome of the first series validates an analytical model for mesh perforation, making it the first simple model capturing the bullet effect. A second series of tests focused on the effect of mesh geometry and it was found that decreasing the mesh aperture by 19 % improves the performance by 50 % while only an extra 30 % could be gained by increasing the wire diameter by 33 %. The outcomes of the second series were used to discuss and redefine a dimensionless geometrical parameter G* and to validate a simple power type equation relating the mesh characteristics and the mesh performance.