Abstract
Rockfall is a major problem in high hill slopes and rocky mountainous regions and construction of highways at these rockfall prone areas often require stable slopes. The causes of rockfall are presence of discontinuities, high angle cut slopes, heavy rainfall, and unplanned slope geometry etc. Slope geometry is one of the most triggering parameters for rockfall, when there are variations in slope angle along the profile of slope. The Present study involves rockfall hazard assessment of road cut slopes for 15 km distance starting from Mahabaleshwar town along State Highway-72 (SH-72). The vertical to subvertical cut slopes are prone to instability due to unfavorable orientation of discontinuities in slope face of weathered and altered basaltic rockmass. The predominant type of instability has been found as wedge type failure involving medium to large size blocks. In order to investigate the existing stability conditions, analyses were carried out at two locations under different slope conditions. The kinematic analysis was performed using stereographic projection method. RockFall 4.0 numerical simulator software was used to calculate the maximum bounce heights, total kinetic energies and translational velocities of the falling rockmass blocks, and a comparative analysis is presented with increasing the mass of blocks and height of the slope. The result of numerical analysis shows that varying slope angle geometry creates more problems as compared to the mass of blocks in the scenario of rockfall.
Highlights
The term “Rockfall” explains usual meaning of rockfall as defined by Cruden et al [1]
The Present study involves rockfall hazard assessment of road cut slopes for 15 km distance starting from Mahabaleshwar town along State Highway-72 (SH-72)
A comparison of rockfall trajectory with increasing mass of the rockfall block and increasing slope height for the fall position of the rock block and to evaluate the three parameters namely bounce height, kinetic energy and transverse velocity in both is the essential contribution of this study
Summary
The term “Rockfall” explains usual meaning of rockfall as defined by Cruden et al [1]. Lee and Elliot defined that a rockfall is the down slope movement of boulders (in case of natural slopes) or rock blocks (in cut slopes) which has the potential to destroy or damage the structures along its path or create an obstacle to public transportation networks, if not properly strained [4]. The present study has been performed to investigate the rockfall hazard along the road cut slopes along SH-72, near Mahabaleshwar town, Maharashtra, India. Field investigation has been carried out to study lithological units, structural features and geomechanical properties of rock mass from Poladpur to Mahabaleshwar, for a distance of about 40 km along SH-72. The kinematic analysis has been performed to evaluate the role of discontinuities and the wedge type of failure is indentified as major failure in the study area.
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