See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/299434972

New approach for flexible debris flow barriers

Article  in  IABSE Symposium Report · September 2015

DOI: 10.2749/222137815818357188

CITATIONS READS

3 807

4 authors, including:

Axel Volkwein
Pfeifer Isofer
54 PUBLICATIONS   1,044 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

FLEXSTOR - Solutions for flexible operation of storage hydropower in changing environmental and market conditions View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Axel Volkwein on 29 June 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland

New approach for flexible debris flow barriers

Axel Volkwein
Swiss Fed. Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

Corinna Wendeler
Geobrugg AG, Romanshorn, Switzerland

Lisa Stieglitz, Guido Lauber

Emch+Berger AG Bern, Switzerland

Contact: volkwein@wsl.ch

Abstract
Flexible debris flow protection barriers consist of a combination of steel ropes and high tensile
steel wire nets following certain design criteria to provide a reliable protection against the sudden
impact of a debris flow with flow heights of up to 2 m and middle front velocities of around 10 m/s
in channelized river beds with widths and heights up to 30 m and 6 m. However, to go beyond the
above described typical application range special design is required. In the actual case a debris
retention basin with a height of 14 m and a width of 40 m was created. The contribution shows
the precedent research on flexible debris flow barriers consisting of field tests and laboratory
experiments, leading to the validated numerical simulations. Main focus then is the design process
of the special purpose barrier, its construction together with the experiences gathered within the
project leading to a not only remarkable but also elegant way to protection from impressive debris
hazards.
Keywords: Natural hazards; protection; debris flows; net systems.

The retention volumes are formed by the use of

1 Introduction
Debris flows are a mixture of sand-size particles,
gravel material and water. They are a sudden flow
trigger by e.g. heavy rainfall and develop large
run-off volumes. To protect river beds from being
overflown special retention basins limit the
discharge to certain limits acting as a buffer for
the oncoming debris or they totally stop and
retain the debris which can be removed in a
controlled manner afterwards.
debris flow barriers commonly made from heavy
concrete or steel works. Since about 10 years [1]
the use of flexible barriers has become normal
against debris flow hazards threatening buildings
and infrastructure nearby. Such barriers mainly
consist of a combination of steel ropes and high
tensile steel wire nets (see Fig. 1). Following
certain design criteria they provide a reliable
protection against the sudden impact of a debris
flow with flow heights of up to 2 m and travel

1
IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland

Figure 1. (left) components of a typical flexible debris flow barrier; (right) barrier in filled state at Illgraben,
Switzerland.

velocities of around 10 m/s in channelized river 7.43421, 46.66342) is prone to debris flows. Its
beds with widths and heights up to 30 m and 6 m. catchment area is 2.14 km2 with a river length of
The advantages of such flexible barriers are their 4.15 km and a highest elevation of 2104 m.a.s.l.
cost efficiency, reduced impact to the Table 1 lists the expected discharges according to
environment and their effectiveness. Previous the corresponding hazard map together with the
works [1] have optimized their arrangement of the damage potential of the expected debris flows.
components now providing a good basis for
Table 1. (a) Discharges of river Hüpach for
corresponding products regarding their design,
different annualities according to official natural
durability, and maintenance. Based on these
hazard map; (b) Potential damage for debris
results the manufacturers of protection barriers
flows.
developed and nowadays provide pre-designed
product palettes to protect against typical debris (a) Discharges for high water HQ and debris flows G
flows. The product design does not (yet) follow Discharge Discharge Peak
official standards, only first recommendations [2, Scenario without without discharge
3
3] and further scientific studies [4, 5] exist so far. [m/s ] bedload bedload debris flow
HQ30/G30 5.4 ~7.5 -
It was now the aim to realize a retention basin HQ100/G100 7.7 10.5 200
with a valley-side height of more than 13 m and a
HQ300/G300 9,9 13.5 350
top width of 40 m. Using the existing flexible
(b) Damage / risk due to debris flows
barrier standard types this would not be possible
G30 G100 G300
and heavy concrete works would have been
necessary. However, the combination of specially Damage [Mio CHF/event] 0.35 5.0 6.0
arranged strong steel cables, a concrete Fatalities / event 0 0.6 1.4
foundation along the river banks and a Damage risk [CHF/year] 12’000 50’000 20’000
typical/standard flexible ring net finally enabled Risk of fatalities per year 0 0.006 0.005
an astonishingly functioning flexible debris barrier.
In the following we describe the local situation for To now cope with the expected debris amounts
the planned barrier, the scientific background for different variants have been studied as for
a successful construction of a suitable flexible example several small barriers as cascades,
barrer and finally its implementation in the field. different locations for one large barrier, deflection
dam, widening of the rive channel etc. The final
2 Site conditions solution which was chosen is a combination of
two retention basins with capacities of 13’000 m3
Above the Swiss village Oberwil in the Simme (see Fig. 2) and 3’000 m3 whereas the large basin
valley the river Hüpach (WGS 84 (long/lat) should be formed using a flexible net barrier with

2
IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
trapezoid shape and a top width of 40 m in a
height of 20 m. The area of the large basin is
accessible only through a small forest road. The
relevant debris flow event parameters were a
volume of the first debris flow surge of 12’000 m3
with a peak discharge of 250 m3 /s. At that site this
corresponds to a flow height/depth of 2.5 m and a
front velocity of 9—10 m/s. The structure further
must withstand a second and third debris surge
with 8’500 m3 each.
Figure 2. Planned 13’000 m3 retention basin with a
flexible barrier at its front.
3 Barrier design
3.1 Standard flexible debris flow barriers
A typical flexible debris flow barrier as shown in
Figure 1 is installed within the river channel at the
banks. Horizontal ropes are connected to the
anchorage. They support the net. To provide the
necessary flexibility of the whole structure so-
called brake or elongation elements are inserted
that lengthen the support ropes under load by up
to two meters. The edge cables prevent the debris
passing between net and banks. The top most so-
called wing cable has mainly two functions. First,
to directly deliver support when the filled barriers
pulls downward due to gravity and, second, to
concentrate overflowing debris to the centre of
the barriers and river channel which avoids
erosion at the anchorage during a debris event. If
overflow of the barrier is expected an abrasion
protection has to be installed along the top edge
of the barrier to avoid breakage due to
mechanical torture of the top ropes. A basal gap
at the bottom avoids an unwanted filling of the
3
barrier during normal high water times. The
typical dimensions of such barriers cover widths of
25 m and height of up to 6 m. The cables usually
have a diameter of 22 mm and depending on the
site conditions several cables (each equipped with
elongation elements) can be combined to a
bundle.
3.2 Standard design procedures
Barriers following the above described scheme
have been extensively studied in [1] where full
scale barriers proved their functionality in the
field. In a second step the barriers have been
modelled using special purpose discrete element
software [7]. The successful validation of the
simulations based on the results of the field
installations now allow to develop different design
variants. The designs always have to be able to
withstand dynamic impact pressures during the
complete filling process as described in [3].
3.3 Special barrier structure
Main challenge for the design of a barrier that can
be used for the situation described in section 2 are
their intended dimension with the resulting large
loads on the net and the supporting structure.
The concept now was to distribute enough
support ropes over the height of the barrier that
the loads on the net stay within a magnitude the
standard ring net can sustain and the anchor loads
seem to be realistically transmittable to the river
banks. The necessary diameter of the ropes then
is predetermined according to the width of the
barriers in different heights. Because of the – in
this case – large barrier width, the cable forces
reach values of up to 9’000 kN. This magnitude
made it impossible to use standard cable bundles.
Instead, cables with diameters of 95 mm and
more were used. However, suitable elongation
elements (see Fig. 1) were not available for such
cables. To still provide the necessary flexibility of
the structure the cables were arranges with given
sag following a normal line of a rope as shown in
Figure 3. Because of durability aspects fully locked
heavy duty cables where used.
IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland

Figure 3. Final design of the flexible debris flow barrier. Heavy duty steel cables with a predefined sag are
distributed over the height of the barrier and anchored in a concrete frame.

The cable ends are anchored in a reinforced
concrete frame, which again is secured to the
ground using drilled anchors.
3.4 Special barrier design
The design of the barrier components has been
done by computational simulation. A discrete
element model has been stepwise filled over nine
load steps. The last modelled load case covered
the situation when the barrier gets overflown by
subsequent debris surges. Figure 4 shows the
filled barrier model and with the colours the
degree of utilization of the net structure.
Based on these simulations the relevant loads on
the foundation can be determined. Figure 5
illustrates the evolution of the rope forces during
the filling process and Table 2 gives the decisive
loads for the single support cables reaching almost
9 MN. The net was continuously connected along
resp. to the concrete girder. This connection also
had to be designed. Figure 6 shows the evolution
of the lateral net anchorage over the barrier
height reaching up to 300 kN per anchor.
Table 2. Decisive loads in kN for the anchorage of
the support cables. The x-direction of the
coordinate system directs in flow direction of the
debris flow.

Support cable X Y Z total

1 1033 5603 886 5766 kN
2 1640 7379 748 7596 kN
3 2016 8110 1081 8427 kN
4 2366 8441 1037 8828 kN
5 2693 8247 1141 8750 kN
6 2545 8338 1532 8852 kN
Figure 4. Discrete element model fully filled. The 7 2202 7042 2018 7649 kN
colors described the degree of utilization of the 8 1668 5711 2178 6335 kN
single components. 9 1758 4973 1890 5602 kN
10 744 2461 1030 2770 kN

4
IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland

12000 Support cable 1

Load on support ropes in kN

Support cable 2
10000 Support cable 3
Support cable 4
8000
Support cable 5
6000 Support cable 6
Support cable 7
4000 Support cable 8
Support cable 9
2000 Support cable 10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Stepwise filling

Figure 5. Evolution of loads on support cables

during stepwise filling of the barrier.

Height a.s.l. [m]

1025
1020
1015
1010
1005
Figure 7. Establishment of lateral excavations for
0 100 200 300 400 abutments using a walking crane.
Load on net anchorage [kN]
Figure 6. Load on anchorage of net along the
concrete girder.

4 Construction site
In this section the final installation in the field of
the planned barrier is shown. The main steps
illustrated in the following figures were
• Excavation works using a walking crane (Fig. 7)
• Drilling of anchorage (Fig. 8)
• Reinforcement of the concrete girder (Fig. 9). Figure 8. Installation of drilled anchors.
The concrete has been added step by step with
the stepwise installation of the steel cables.
• The ropes were delivered with pre-fabricated
rope lengths and rope end fitting into the rope
terminals on the girder (Fig. 10)
• Once all the support cables have been
mounted the net panels were installed (Fig. 11)
All site works were done during two summer
seasons. During the construction steady water
handling was mandatory.

Figure 9. Construction of the concrete girder.

5
IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
Figure 10. Mounting of pre-fabricated ropes into
special rope sockets.
Figure 11. Mounting of the net panels after
completion of support cables.
6
5 Concluding remarks
In this contribution a completely new construction
in the field of flexible barriers against debris flows
has been presented. This building is the biggest
flexible debris flow barrier world wide. Although
mainly embedded in a normal engineering project
some innovations requiring preceding research
and structural optimization lead to an impressive
structure, that at the same time keeps the impact
on the environment on a minimum level.
The main idea that enabled the current structure
was the introduction of a pre-defined cable sag.
This measure provides the necessary flexibility of
the cables during a debris event even without
additional elongation element. Apart from the the
fact that these elements even do not exist for such
thick ropes.
The pre-planning of the project presented already
started in 2006 after detection of the endangered
zones. At that time, different variants were
studied but without consideration of net
structures. The final project with the solution
shown in Figure 12 finally finished with a total
budget of 2.6 Mio Swiss Francs.
Figure 12. Finished net barrier Hüpach.
For the future the barrier has to be checked
regularly after floods and in case of (partial)
backfill corresponding measures to clean it up
again can be taken. Without any large event the
barrier is estimated to have a service life time of
at least 50 years. Mainly decisive for this time
period is the corrosion protection of the barrier
components. Therefore special zinc aluminium
coating and also fully locked heavy duty wire
 IABSE Conference – Structural Engineering: Providing Solutions to Global Challenges
September 23-25 2015, Geneva, Switzerland

ropes were used to provide a technically time

adequate corrosion protection.

Acknowledgement
We as a team also want to say thank you to Richi
Weiss from Fatzer AG who supported us as good
as possible with the choice of heavy duty ropes
[8].

6 References
[1] Wendeler, C. Murgangrückhalt in Wildbächen
- Grundlagen zu Planung und Berechnung von
flexiblen Barrieren. Diss. ETH Nr. 17916,
2008.
[2] Kwan, J.S.H. & Cheung R.W.M. Suggestions
on Design Approaches for Flexible Debris-
resisting Barriers, incl. Appendix C Comments
and responses, Discussion Note DN 1/2012,
GEO, Hong Kong, 2012.
[3] Volkwein, A. Flexible debris flow barriers -
Design and application. WSL Ber. 18, 2014.
[4] Burden E., Low Z., Bianchi P., and Tan S.M.
Reinforced Concrete Dimensioning based on
Element Nodal Forces. ASCE Journal of
Structural Engineering. 2002; 120(6): 1718-
1731.
[5] Brighenti R, Segalini A, Ferrero A M Debris
flow hazard mitigation: A simplified analytical
model for the design of flexible barriers.
Computers and Geotechnics, 54; 1–15, 2013.
[6] Canelli L., Ferrero A. M., Migliazza M. &
Segalini, A. Debris flow risk mitigation by the
means of rigid and flexible barriers –
experimental tests and impact analysis. Nat.
Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 12, 1693–1699, 2012.
[7] Volkwein, A. Numerical simulation of flexible
rockfall protection systems. In: Proceedings
of the International Conference on
Computing in Civil Engineering, July 12-15,
2005, Cancun, Mexico
[8] Weiss, R. Gigantischer Hochwasserschutz im
Simmental, Brugg Flash, internal News from
Brugg Groupe, 2012.

View publication stats