Centrifuge scaling laws for guided free fall events including rockfalls

Concrete protection galleries are generally used in mountainous regions to protect the local infrastructure and lifelines against potential impacts from rock boulders. These can be protected further by carefully designed cushion systems, most of which rely on granular geomaterials. Rockfall impact energies can reach magnitudes of the order of millions of Joules, requiring understanding of the combined energy absorption mechanisms at high energy levels for improved design of the gallery and cushion. These prototype high-energy ranges can be achieved at the laboratory scale with the help of a geotechnical centrifuge. The model is rotated under high g levels, thereby increasing the unit weight of the material. Prototype energy levels can be represented in a small scale model with consideration of appropriate scaling laws, and although free fall events in a centrifuge experience components of the Coriolis acceleration, projectiles (boulders) will move out of the centripetal gravity field when losing contact with the rotational field. A guiding tube is used in this case to keep the boulder in the acceleration field (ng) in order to achieve sufficient input energy levels to represent existing design criteria. The change in the g-level during the fall of the boulder in the centrifuge, due to the change in the radius, has to be taken into account for determination of the impact energy. In this case, direct application of traditional scaling laws for centrifuge modelling is invalid. This paper focuses on the determination of the change in the g field with time during the fall of the boulder to estimate the g level at the time of impact and this value is used in the calculation of the prototype energy levels. A summary of the performance of various cushion materials is given.