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The installation of draped meshes, metallic nets installed in such a way as to lie against the rock slope surface, is one of the most common ways to protect roads and infrastructure against the detachment of small rock elements in areas prone to rock fall. Despite their frequent and worldwide application, there are no universally recognized guidelines or technical standards to help engineers in their correct design, and no full-scale test results are available where the whole system, composed of several interacting structural components, is tested. In this paper, a full-scale test procedure, which is able to permit the evaluation of the global behaviour of a draped mesh, is described and the results of tests carried out on widely used meshes are presented and discussed.

Infrastructures such as roads and railways as well as urbanised areas, in mountainside regions, can frequently be endangered by rockfalls and, therefore, need to be protected against the impact of rolling blocks. Among the various protection works that can be used, ground reinforced embankments can be considered a feasible technique. A set of full-scale tests on embankments made of ground reinforced by geogrids are presented and discussed. The experiments were performed in a specifically designed and constructed test facility, where concrete blocks up to 9,000 kg in weight were thrown onto a geogrid reinforced embankment at a speed of about 30 m/s. Several embankments made of different geogrid types, different soils and construction layouts were tested at different impact energy levels, permitting a quantitative assessment of the resistance impact of these structures. The experimental results were compared with those obtained from a dynamic finite element method numerical model, and a good agreement was obtained.

Rockfalls evolve rapidly and unpredictably in mountain environments and can cause considerable losses to human societies, structures, economical activities, and also natural and historical heritage. Rockfall risk analyses are complex and multi-scale processes involving several disciplines and techniques. This complexity is due to the main features of rockfall phenomena, which are extremely variable over space and time. Today, a considerable number of methods exists for protecting land, as well as assessing and managing the risk level. These methodologies are often very different from each other, depending on the data required, the purposes of the analysis, and the reference scale adopted, i.e., the analysis level of detail. Nevertheless, several questions still remain open with reference to each phase of the hazard and risk process. This paper is devoted to a general overview of existing risk estimation methodologies and a critical analysis of some open questions with the aim of highlighting possible further research topics. A typical risk assessment framework is exemplified by analyzing a real case study. Each step of the process is treated at both the detailed and the large scale in order to highlight the main characteristics of each level of detail.

Abstract. The need for protection against rockfall has led to the development of different types of technological solutions that are able to both prevent blocks from detaching from rock walls and to control, intercept or deviate the blocks during movement. Of the many devices that are able to intercept and stop a block, one of the most frequently used is net fence. Many different types of full-scale tests have been carried out, with different test site geometries and procedures to study their behaviour and to certify these devices. This has led to a series of data and information that are not easy to compare. The recent endorsement, by the European Organization for Technical Approvals (EOTA), of a European Technical Approval Guideline (ETAG), which defines how to test and assess the performance of a net fence, is therefore a great innovation that will change both the market and the design procedures of these devices. The most important innovations introduced by this new guideline are here presented and discussed and a net fence design procedure for protection against rockfall is provided.

In order to extend the application field of Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) tunnel machines to various soil conditions, the soil to be excavated has to be treated with additives in order to modify its mechanical properties, changing it into a plastic paste. Sometimes the grain size distribution is also changed with the use of fine-sized materials. The performance of the conditioned soil should be evaluated with tests that are able to describe its mass behavior, but very little research has been carried out in this field. Often the choice of the conditioning agent set and its control during the excavation is made on a trial-and-error basis during the excavation process. The slump cone test performed on conditioned material is a fast and lowcost way of checking this behavior both in the laboratory and on the job site. The results of a test program on different conditioned non-cohesive soils using the slump cone test are presented and discussed. The influence of the water content and the amount of conditioning foam has been studied, and the feasibility of this type of test for the control of EPB conditioned soil has been assessed.

Abstract. With reference to the rockfall risk estimation and the planning of rockfall protection devices, one of the most critical and most discussed problems is the correct definition of the design block by taking into account its return period. In this paper, a methodology for the assessment of the design block linked with its return time is proposed and discussed, following a statistical approach. The procedure is based on the survey of the blocks that were already detached from the slope and had accumulated at the foot of the slope in addition to the available historical data.