1 INTRODUCTION1.1

 Debris flow

Alpine regions are exposed to many different naturalhazards, such as avalanches, debris flows, land-slides, flooding and rock fall. Debris flows are ex-tremely mobile, highly concentrated mixtures of poorly sorted sediment in water (Pierson 1986). Thematerial incorporated is inherently complex, varyingfrom clay sized solids to boulders of several metersin diameter. Due to their high density (exceedingthat of water by more than a factor of two) and theirhigh mobility, debris flows represent a serious haz-ard for people, settlements, and infrastructure inmountainous regions. The front of a debris flow canreach velocities of up to 30 m/s (e.g. Costa 1984,Rickenmann 1999) and peak discharges tens of times greater than for floods occurring in the samecatchment (e.g. Pierson 1986; Hungr et al. 2001). Itis difficult to quantify annual economic losses due tosuch phenomena, however, in the year 2005 alone,more than 80 million Euro was spent in Austria forprotection measures against torrential hazards (in-cluding floods, bedload transport, and debris flow).In debris flow research, the flowing mixture ismostly divided into the liquid ‘matrix’, composed of water and fine sediment in suspension, and the solidphase, consisting of coarse particles dispersed influid. Depending on the relative concentration of fine and coarse sediment, the prefix ‘viscous’ or‘granular’ is often used. Since the early seventies,research has increasingly focused on the topic of de-bris flow behaviour (Johnson 1970, Costa 1984).Mudflows and debris flows consisting of a consider-able amount of fine sediment are often regarded ashomogeneous fluids, where the bulk flow behaviouris controlled by the ‘rheologic’ properties of the ma-terial mixture (e.g. Coussot et al. 1998; Cui et al.2005). This simple rheologic approach has limita-tions for r debris flows consisting mainly of coarse

Estimation of design impact forces of debris flows

D. Proske, J, Suda, J. Hübl

University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria

ABSTRACT: Mountain regions are exposed to a number of natural hazards such as avalanches, debris flows,rock falls and rock avalanches, flash floods and landslides. Mitigation measures are often employed to reducethe risks of hazards to humans and human settlements to an acceptable level. The design of structural mitiga-tion measures are often not regulated and chosen arbitrary. Despite this situation, the design should at leastcomply with current rules for the design of structures. this measure has not yet been put in place.. Currently inAustria a new code of practice for the design of structural mitigation (concrete) measures against debris flow,is under development. This code deals with the design of debris flow barriers in terms of load cases, such asreinforcement details, static and dynamic loads. One of the major tasks to establish this new code is the prepa-ration of flow impact forces for the design process. In this background document all known techniques for theestimation of such debris flow impacts are investigated in terms of prediction quality. Furthermore, also in-cluded are theoretical works, miniaturized testing (including tests conducted by the authors) and known realworld measurements. The formulas are further compared (based on sensitivity) against unknown input vari-ables. This investigation has been extended to include weighting factors according to the First Order Reliabil-ity Method. Despite the Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering having one of the greatest data files onnatural hazard events (starting around 500 A.C.), the knowledge of debris flow in certain regions, very oftenlacks a sufficient amount of data for statistical analysis. Furthermore populations(do you mean data sets?) areheavily corrupted due to climate change, changing geomorphologic conditions and changing flora. Besidesthis the reporting quality of early events is extremely low. Therefore further techniques have been used, suchas Fuzzy sets, Rough sets and Grey numbers. Awareness of the uncertainty and indeterminism of the dataheavily influences the choice of the design impact force and can not be neglected in the choice of its design.Furthermore partial safety factors for this event have also been chosen.

 

particles and water. In the last decades, geotechnicalmodels have been employed to describe the motionof (granular) debris flows (e.g. Savage & Hutter1989, Iversion 1997).The flow behavior of debris flows can be veryvariable, strongly depending on sediment composi-tion and water content. Moreover, debris flow vol-ume and bulk flow behavior may change duringtravel through a channel by for e.g. entrainment of loose sediment and/or incorporation of water from atributary. For this reason, until now no general ap-plicable model used in praxis is capable of coveringthe range of all possible material mixtures and eventscenarios.1.2

 Design event 

For engineers it is important to predict possible trig-gering zones and deposition areas or runout lengths.Runout analysis is an essential component for haz-ard assessment in alpine watersheds, which includespre-diction of potential hazard areas and mappingthe distribution of hazard intensity parameters, suchas velocity, flow depth and the thickness of the de-posits. For the design of mitigation measures – suchas check dams or other torrential barriers – it is es-sential to makea good estimation of possible impactforces of debris flow events occurring in a catch-ment. These impact forces can be considered to de-pend mainly on:• mixture composition, and• dynamic parameters, like flow depth and meanvelocityMixture composition depends on the geologic andgeomorphologic background of the watershed,which of course has a significant influence on theflow behavior of the mixture. The maximum valuesof impact forces may also be a result of materialcomposition (consider the impact of a debris flowinvolving several large boulders vs. a muddy debrisflow with the same dynamic parameters).There are many parameters influencing debrisflow dynamics, as already mentioned sediment com-position and water content, but also channel slope,cross section area, and event magnitude. The prob-ability of occurrence and the potential event volumeof future debris flows can be regarded as the mostimportant unknowns for debris flow hazard assess-ment. According to Rickenmann (1999), the applica-tion of the concept of ‘recurrence intervals’ and as-sociated event volumes, as traditionally used inflood frequency analysis, may be problematic in thecontext of debris flow hazard assessment, since (1)only limited data of historic events is available, (2)a debris flow event may depend on previous ones.Zimmermann et al. (1987) found the characteristicpattern between debris flow magnitude and fre-quency for a particular catchment, to depend on thesediment availability and on the lithology of thecatchment. Further different empirical equations canbe found in literature (e.g. Kronfellner-Kraus 1987,Zeller 1985, Rickenmann & Zimmermann 1993). Allof these equations can be considered a rough estima-tion of total debris flow volume, based on the mostimportant morphometric catchment characteristic.Rickenmann (1999) found that these formulae mayoverestimate the actual event volume by up to a fac-tor of 100. In engineering practice it is therefore rec-ommended to carry out a geomorphologic assess-ment of the sediment potential in the watershed. This– combined with a frequency analysis of precipita-tion data – might yield a realistic estimate for thevolume of a design debris flow event Additionallyconsideration of the uncertainty of the formulas hasto be made– either using probabilistic or othermathematical techniques.Using the information from field analysis (eventmagnitude, kind of sediment,…) it is necessary toestimate dynamic parameters such as peak dis-charge, mean flow velocity and flow depth, eitherusing empirical relations (Rickenmann 1999) or de-termined by simulation models (e.g. O’Brien et al.1993, Pitman & Le 2005).1.3

 Design of structural elements

Unfortunately there is little known about the forceson structural elements, which might be caused bydebris flows. Until now, barriers have been designedusing some rough rules of thumb. Knowledge mightbe adapted to debris flows through the application of general procedures in the Eurocode, for the devel-opment of design forces. Structural elements have tobe designed according to codes of practices or otherregulations. Such codes are developed based onsome general procedures or major assumptions. Inthe Eurocode the design and construction of build-ings is heavily based on statistics and probabilitytheory. This permits the introduction of general rulesindependent of the specific material or the specifictype of load. Based on these rules design forces havebeen developed for many loads.Nevertheless many different load types are notdealt with, either because data is missing or becausepeople working in specific fields are not aware of the general rules. For example the Eurocode doesnot yet deal with forces from avalanches or debrisflows. This investigation tries to pull together theprocedures according to the Eurocode and in-formation on the impact forces of debris flow.However it may also be possible, that the safetyconcept of the Eurocode is simply insufficient forsuch cases.

 

2 INVESTIGATION OF DEBRIS FLOWIMPACT2.1

 Introduction

At the Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering, Uni-versity of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sci-ences, Vienna, different ways have been used to de-velop design parameters for debris flow impacts.These approaches involve measurement of impactforces by large scale experimental debris flows(Hübl & Jäger 2004), measurement of miniaturizedlaboratory debris flows and investigation of damagesof barrier structures caused by debris flow. All threeprocedures are characterized by the amount of dataavailable and assumptions made thereby. For exam-ple the measurement of real scale debris flow is verylimited, whereas the number of tests of the miniatur-ized debris flow is high. With the result that scalebecomes a problem. The investigation of existingstructures might include the problem of identifica-tion of the causes of damage and identification of the first damage.2.2

 Real scale debris flow impact tests

Large scale debris flow impact tests have been car-ried out on a test site in the western part of Austria,in the ‘Schesatobel’ watershed. The test site is situ-ated in a massive erosion area of moraine material.By controlling the outflow of a small artificial lake,debris flows are triggered by erosion processes inthe loose material. At the end of a short transit zonean artificial barrier structure was installed. Themeasurement station is shown in figure 1 before andfigure 2 during the impact of debris flow. The meas-ured parameters include flow depth, surface velocityderived from video analysis, and impact forces on upto nine load cells in total. The tests were done in2004 (Hübl & Jäger 2004) and 2006.Since the debris flow is rather heterogeneous, theevaluation of the data of the load cells was con-trolled by the video used for velocity measurements.The measured forces were classified into two types:the dynamic pressure of the debris flow and the im-pact forces by major stone bodies. During the testthe maximum dynamic water pressure was estimatedto be 40 kN/m

2

. An example of the flow of the pres-sure over time is shown in figure 3. Single impactforces were measured up to 8 kN. Based on thevideo material, the stone causing this impact forcewas identified. The mass was estimated as 30 kg,with a velocity of 4 to 5 m/s. Considering that onestone with a diameter of 1 m was observed on thevideo, but lacking the load cells, the possible impactforces were estimated assuming the same motionproperties as the 30 kg stone, the impact forceshould have been about 500 kN. The relationship be-tween the impact force and the motion of the stoneswere also investigated using advanced distinct ele-ment models. The estimated impact force for a stonewith 50 cm diameter is then 750 kN.

Figure 1. Experimental set-up at the beginning of the test.Figure 2. Experimental set-up at the end of the test.Figure 3. Measured dynamic debris flow pressure over time.

Zhang (1993) used a different measurement set-up to estimate the maximal impact force. Instead of using load cells, Zhang (1993) used plastic deforma-tions as indicators for maximum loads. Zhang col-lected more than 70 impact force graphs for fluid