HIGH SPEED VIDEO ANALYSIS OF ROCKFALL FENCE SYSTEM EVALUATION. FINAL REPORT

Rockfall fence systems are used to protect motorists from rocks, dislodged from slopes near roadways, which would potentially roll onto the road at high speeds carrying significant energy. There is an unfortunate list of such rocks on unprotected roads that have caused fatalities and other damage. This report describes a series of rockfall fence system tests at a test range in Rifle, Colorado during March 1998. The tests were for the evaluation and certification of four rockfall fence system designs. Los Alamos National Laboratory provided two high speed video systems and operators to record each individual rockfall on the fence systems. From the recordings, the linear and rotational velocities at impact for each rockfall were measured. Using the velocity results, it was possible to calculate the impact energy for each rockfall and the fence design could then be certified up to the maximum energy that each fence system could absorb without failure.

• Corporate Authors:

  Los Alamos National Laboratory

  P.O. Box 1663
  Los Alamos, NM  United States  87545

  Department of Energy

  1000 Independence Avenue, SW
  Washington, DC  United States  20585
• Authors:
  • Fry, D A
  • Lucero, J P
• Publication Date: 1998-7-1

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 14 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Certification; Failure analysis; Fences; Impact loads; Performance evaluations; Rockfalls; Velocity measurement
• Subject Areas: Education and Training; Geotechnology; Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00765420
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: LA-UR-98-2994
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jun 26 1999 12:00AM