Case Study on Safety Assessment of Rockfall and Splash Stone Protective Structures for Secondary Excavation of Highway Slope

Rockfall occurs on the excavation of the slope of highway resulting from excavated rock pieces. In order to solve the problem of rockfall protection during the disturbance of high slope secondary excavation, rockfall analysis program RocFall was used to perform inverse calculation for rockfall path of excavation disturbed rock. Based on a case study of a reconstruction and expansion project, two rockfall movement models were proposed under excavation disturbance. Moreover, the safety of protective structures under five protection schemes and different initial rockfall movement points is evaluated according to the rockfall interceptions rate. The evaluation results were further verified by long-term field observation. The results show that the protective structure at the slope top has a better interception effect to rockfall. It was difficult to intercept the splash stone, which threats to the traffic safety of the existing roads. According to different construction points of mechanical excavation and the interception rate of splash stone by the protective structure, the forbidden region and safety region of mechanical excavation were proposed.

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