Rock fall impact on reinforced concrete slab: an experimental approach

This paper concerns the protective structures against rock fall. We propose a new concept of rock-shed protection. The proposed rock-shed protection is made of reinforced concrete slabs held up by specially designed supports that act as a type of expendable fuse to absorb high rock-fall energy especially when shock occurs on the side of the slab. Thus, by a simple change of damaged supports and local restoration of concrete in the impact area, the structure can continue to be used. We present also an experimental method to characterize and analyze shock absorption effected by this type of reinforced concrete slab. The analyzed slab is a 1/3 scale reproduction of an actual structure.