Full-scale testing of draped nets for rock fall

protection
Paola Bertolo, Claudio Oggeri, and Daniele Peila
Abstract: 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 tech-
nical 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.
Key words: rock fall, natural risks, full-scale testing, wire mesh, cable net.
Resume : Linstallation de maillage drape, des filets metalliques installes de manie`re a` reposer sur une surface rocheuse
en pente, est une des methodes les plus courantes de proteger les routes et les infrastructures contre le detachement de pe-
tites roches dans les zones propices aux eboulements. Malgre leur utilisation frequente et repandue a` travers le monde, il
ny a pas de normes ni de standards techniques pour assister les ingenieurs dans le choix de la conception appropriee. Au-
cun resultats dessais a` lechelle reelle, comprenant le syste`me complet compose de plusieurs elements structurants inte-
gres, sont disponibles. Dans cet article, une procedure dessais a` lechelle reelle qui permet levaluation du comportement
global dun maillage drape est decrite et les resultats des essais effectues sur des grillages typiquement utilises sont presen-
tes et discutes.
Mots-cles : eboulements, risques naturels, essais a` lechelle reelle, grillage metallique, filet de cables.
[Traduit par la Redaction]
Introduction
Small rock fragments and single rock blocks, with sizes
between 0.01 and 1.5 m
3
, that detach from slopes over-
hanging roads and railways create one of the most frequent
hazards for public transportation systems, and must be ad-
dressed and controlled by the owner of the infrastructure
(Peckover and Kerr 1977; Evans and Hungr 1993). Gener-
ally speaking, protection interventions against rock falls can
be classified as either active or passive: the aim of an active
system is to prevent instability from occurring, whereas pas-
sive systems are designed to mitigate the effects of a pre-
vious movement by intercepting and stopping falling rock
blocks. Pre-stressed wire anchors, rock bolts, and grouted
bars can therefore be classified as active, as they prevent
the detachment of blocks from their original position. Em-
bankments, ditches, net or catch-fences, and rock sheds are
passive, as they do not directly interfere in the process of
rock detachment, but control the dynamic effects of moving
blocks (Peila et al. 1998, 2006). Wire mesh and cable net
slope protection systems, which are metallic cable nets or
wire meshes installed directly on the slope face (Peckover
and Kerr 1977; Wyllie and Norris 1996; Ferraiolo 2005;
Muhunthan et al. 2005; Bertolo et al. 2006), can be consid-
ered as systems that are somewhere in between the two
above-mentioned classes: they act mainly by covering the
slope and controlling the movement of rock fragments, thus
preventing them from freely falling onto infrastructure
(Ruegger et al. 2000; Flum et al. 2004; Ferraiolo and Giac-
chetti 2005; Ferraiolo 2005; Bertolo et al. 2006; Peila and
Oggeri 2006).
Despite the worldwide application of drapery meshes, the
global behaviour of the system has been poorly investigated
and only laboratory tests on single components of the drap-
ery systems can be found in published literature, which in-
clude tests on net panels under static loads or dynamic
impacts and tests on clips and cables. However, no full-scale
tests have been developed that are able to verify the behav-
iour of the overall system as installed on site. Furthermore,
it should be observed that only a few design approaches are
available to help a designer choose the best product and its
configuration for the local geomechanic conditions. These
are usually not based on the real behaviour of the mesh and
(or) net when loaded, but are based on theoretical assump-
tions of the behaviour of the system (Giani 1992; Flum et
al. 2004; Ferraiolo 2005; Muhunthan et al. 2005; Shu et al.
2005; Valfre 2006; Sasiharan et al. 2006).
Conversely, rock fall net fences have been systematically
tested using dynamic full-scale tests, using different types of
testing devices (Smith and Duffy 1990; Gerber and Haller
Received 14 March 2008. Accepted 16 November 2008.
Published on the NRC Research Press Web site at cgj.nrc.ca on
4 March 2009.
P. Bertolo. Officine Maccaferri SpA, Via degli Agresti, 6,
Bologna 40123, Italy.
C. Oggeri and D. Peila.
1
Department of Land, Environment,
and Geotechnology (DITAG), Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca
degli Abruzzi 24, Torino 10129, Italy.
1
Corresponding author (e-mail: daniele.peila@polito.it).
306
Can. Geotech. J. 46: 306317 (2009) doi:10.1139/T08-126 Published by NRC Research Press
1997; Amman and Haller 1999; Peila et al. 1998, 2006), and
it is therefore possible to compare the behaviour of the vari-
ous products that have the same impact energy. Further-
more, some numerical dynamic simulations based on these
results have been developed, which allow the quality of the
products to be improved and relevant design parameters to
be provided, such as, for example, the forces that act during
the rock fall impact on the cable and post foundations (Caz-
zani et al. 2002; Volkwein 2005; Peila et al. 2006).
Following the same approach, the importance of pursuing
a suitable design for net drapery systems clearly emerges to
understand the behaviour of the overall system consisting of
various combinations of nets, cables, and rock bolts. This re-
sult can only be obtained using full-scale devices where the
net drapery system is installed as it would be on real project
sites and where the stressing action is as close as possible to
reality.
For these reasons, a specifically designed test site that can
act on a large portion of a net drapery installed as in a real
situation has been set up, and its design, its geometry, and
the results that can be obtained are discussed in detail in the
following sections to show the feasibility and usefulness of
the proposed test procedure.
Wire mesh and cable nets slope protection
systems
Among the wide range of draped wire mesh and cable
nets that are used to prevent rocks from falling from a cliff
or slope, the most common ones are
Simple wire mesh drapery systems, which are made of
metallic wire nets fixed to the top and bottom of the cliff
using grouted steel bars and are left unanchored along the
slope. The aim of this intervention is to guide loose fall-
ing debris and small rock elements to the foot of the
slope, thus preventing them from bouncing onto infra-
structure (Fig. 1). The weight of the mesh is a relevant
parameter, as the heavier the mesh, the greater the dam-
pening effect the mesh has on suppressing the movement
of the falling rock element (Muhunthan et al. 2005). The
mesh used must also be able to resist tangential and nor-
mal forces induced by the falling block that could cause
the mesh to tear or be punctured.
Fixed drapery systems made of the same type of wire net
as the previous case, but confined against the slope by
metallic cables fixed to the rock using a regular pattern
of rock bolts, thus forcing the net to follow the slope geo-
metry more closely. The aims of this intervention are:
(i) to control the detachment of the rock fragments under
the net and to limit their movement inside the cable lay-
out, thus preventing them from moving freely, and (ii) to
improve the stability of the slope with a regular pattern
of fully grouted bolts (Fig. 2).
Cable net panels made of metallic cables connected or
linked in different ways (i.e., clips, knots, etc.) or ring
Fig. 1. Simple mesh drapery system.
Fig. 2. Fixed drapery system.
Bertolo et al. 307
Published by NRC Research Press
net panels fixed to the slope using rock bolts and then
laced together with steel cables or other devices (Figs. 3,
4). More flexible fabrics provide better conformance to
the slope geometry than stiff fabrics and reduce the dis-
tance between the slope and the net, therefore reducing
the dynamic effects of falling rock elements that can da-
mage the net.
At present, both wire mesh and cable net slope protection
systems are commonly installed on slopes, and the basic de-
sign has been modified to address a variety of slope and
loading conditions so that several design variations now ex-
ist. Although these basic design methods have not been sup-
ported by a quantitative design methodology, these systems
usually work well. Recently, some consensus has developed
among geotechnical specialists and contractors that certain
system elements may be over-designed. In addition, system
Fig. 4. Example of (a) normal clip and (b) knot used to fix cable
square meshes in cable panels.
Fig. 5. Examples of test procedures for clips and knots (courtesy
F. Ferraiolo, reproduced with permission). These tests are obtained
mainly by fixing one cable and pulling out the other cable while
measuring (a) the slipping force or (b) the breaking force.
Fig. 6. Examples of of test results on clips and knots obtained with
the laboratory device shown in Fig. 5b (courtesy Officine Macca-
ferri S.p.A., reproduced with permission). HEA, steel cable net.
Fig. 7. View of the tests carried out at Istituto per la Tecnologia
della Costruzione Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italian Na-
tional Research Council) using (a) a cone-shaped and (b) a round-
shaped punching element (Bonati and Galimberti 2004, reproduced
with permission).
Fig. 3. Cable net panels.
308 Can. Geotech. J. Vol. 46, 2009
Published by NRC Research Press
failures under a variety of loading conditions have occurred
over the last decades, indicating that certain design elements
may in fact be under-designed for the desired application.
Although incomplete geotechnical site characterization
and inappropriate applications have been responsible for
some system failures, the lack of understanding with regards
to load transfer from the mesh or net to the rock bolts and
confining cables, as well as system load capacity, remains a
fundamental design obstacle (Muhunthan et al. 2005).
To correctly choose and design these interventions, the
geological and geomechanical characterization of the rock
slope, which is necessary to define the loads induced by the
falling rock element, must be coupled with the behaviour of
the loaded net system. This must take into consideration that
the performance of the system is influenced by external fac-
tors, such as anchorage type and pattern, slope geometry,
and installation procedures on the slope, and internal factors,
such as the fabric weight, stiffness and flexibility of the net,
puncture strength, and corrosion resistance.
Laboratory tests on the meshes and on the
net components
A variety of mesh types that can be used in drapery sys-
tems exist, but they are all mainly characterized by the fol-
lowing parameters:
mass per unit area
punching resistance
Table 1. Summary of the large-scale laboratory tests developed by Bonati and Galimberti (2004) with the device of Fig. 7b with different
constraints of the mesh panel on the rigid frame. The results of these tests (Bonati and Galimberti 2004; Ferraiolo 2005) are used for
comparison with the results of the full-scale site tests.
Test No. Type of mesh Test geometry and constraints used
1 HEA panel (3 m 3 m size), 10 mm diameter
cable elementary mesh (300 mm 300 mm)
2 HEA panel (3 m 3 m size), 10 mm diameter
cable elementary mesh (300 mm 300 mm)
3 Double-twisted wire mesh (3 m 3 m size)
Bertolo et al. 309
Published by NRC Research Press
tensile strength of the individual mesh wires or cables
and of net and panel samples
tensile strength of the junction of the cables (for cable
panels)
mesh flexibility, which depends on the fabric geometry
and assembly.
Several different types of test have been performed by the
various manufacturers of these products to test these proper-
ties.
The characterization of clips or steel wire knots (Fig. 4)
can be performed by stressing the elements inside a cali-
brated test traction rig. These tests should allow the slipping
force of the cable through the clip or the knot and the break-
ing force of the junction system (Figs. 5, 6) to be measured;
however, these tests are greatly influenced by the adopted
boundary conditions. The results of some tests carried out
using the laboratory device of Fig. 5b are reported in Fig. 6.
Punch tests on large-sized samples of the nets have the
aim of modelling the action of a punching block that
stresses the net and consist of a punching element that is
forced against a portion of net that is anchored to a metallic
frame.
Tests on square mesh samples using a cylinder-shaped
punching element with 100, 150, 200, and 600 mm diameter
metal with the plate face acting on the net were reported by
Agostini et al. (1988), Ballester et al. (1996), Majoral et al.
(2008), and Fresno (2008).
More recently, Bonati and Galimberti (2004) developed a
large-scale test procedure, which used both a cone that
measured 780 mm in height and 680 mm in diameter at the
base (Fig. 7a) and a 1500 mm diameter, 200 mm high, con-
crete round-shaped element (Fig. 7b) as punching elements.
In these tests, the net panel was fixed onto a rigid horizontal
square frame (3 m 3 m), and then the cone or the rounded
punching element were pulled normally into the net in the
centre of the panel. Some of the results of this research
(summarized in Table 1) are compared with the results of
the present study to show the influence of the boundary con-
dition of the obtained results.
This type of test allows the behaviour of different net
panels to be compared with several different boundary con-
ditions (as the net can be connected to the metallic frame in
different ways), providing the loaddisplacement curves of
the net panel, one of the most relevant parameters that needs
to be taken into account in the design. It should be pointed
out that the obtained results are greatly influenced by the
chosen constraint conditions. Therefore, even though the
tests provide valuable results for the characterization of the
net, they are not directly applicable to the design, as it is
Fig. 8. Front view of the full-scale test field and schematic draw-
ing. The rock mass irregular geometry was imposed to reduce the
size of the right upper corner of the lateral net. It has been verified
that this change in geometry did not significantly altered the
boundary conditions of the tested net panel. BEL, bottom extreme
left; BER, bottom extreme left; BL, bottom left; BR, bottom right;
LEL, lower extreme left; LER, lower extreme right; LL, lower left;
LR, lower right; TEL, top extreme left; TER, top extreme right;
TL, top left; TR, top right; UEL, upper extreme left; UER, upper
extreme lright; UL, upper left; UR, upper right.
Fig. 9. Sketch of the field test: vertical section.
310 Can. Geotech. J. Vol. 46, 2009
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not possible to define beforehand the boundary condition
that can be obtained on the rock slopes in reality.
Tests where a net panel is anchored to a rigid frame that
is able to apply a traction force to one side were carried out
to evaluate the deformability versus the tensile strength of a
portion of a mesh or net panel (Agostini et al. 1988; Muhun-
than et al. 2005).
All the tests previously described should be considered as
material index tests of the various elements, but their results
are only partially representative of the real behaviour of the
drapery system installed on site. To obtain a more realistic
forcedisplacement relationship of a drapery system, it is
necessary to perform full-scale experiments where the sys-
tem is installed as in reality.
Full-scale test device
The full-scale test device was set up on a real vertical
rock slope located at the town of Pont Boset in Aosta Valley
(northern Italy) where an almost 6 m 6 m wire mesh or
cable net was installed using a square anchorage pattern
with a 3 m interaxis (which is the most common). The
tested portion of the net (3 m 3 m) was therefore con-
nected with the rock mass exactly as in reality, and the lat-
Fig. 10. Installed transducers and their positions at the test site.
Table 2. Full-scale tests.
Test No. Type of mesh Type of drapery system installed
1 HEA panel (3 m 3 m panel), 10 mm diameter cable;
mesh size 400 mm 400 mm, without edge cable
Cable net panels; anchorage bolt inserted in the edge mesh of the
net panel
2 HEA panel (3 m 3 m panel), 10 mm diameter cable;
mesh size 400 mm 400 mm, without edge cable
Cable net panels; the panel is the one already deformed after test
1; anchorage bolt inserted in the edge mesh of the net panel
3 HEA panel (3 m 3 m panel), 10 mm diameter cable;
mesh size 300 mm 300 mm, without edge cable
Cable net panels; anchorage bolt inserted in the edge mesh of the
net panel
4 HEA panel (3 m 3 m panel), 10 mm diameter cable;
mesh size 300 mm 300 mm, without edge cable
Cable net panels; anchorage bolt inserted in the edge mesh of the
net panel
5 HEA panel (3 m 3 m panel), 10 mm diameter cable;
mesh size 300 mm 300 mm, without edge cable
Cable net panels; anchorage bolt inserted in the edge mesh of the
net panel
6 HEA panel (3 m 3 m panel), 10 mm diameter cable;
mesh size 300 mm 300 mm, without edge cable
Cable net panels; anchorage bolt inserted in the edge mesh of the
net panel
7 Double-twisted wire mesh Fixed drapery system with crossed reinforcing cables connected
to the anchors (pattern 3 m 3 m) with a square 150 mm
150 mm plate
8 Double-twisted wire mesh Fixed drapery system with sub-horizontal reinforcing cables con-
nected to the anchors (pattern 3 m 3 m) with a square
150 mm 150 mm plate
9 Double-twisted wire mesh Simple mesh drapery system
Bertolo et al. 311
Published by NRC Research Press
eral portions of the net acted as the boundary conditions of
the tested sample (Fig. 8).
A 2.3 m long hydraulic jack, which can apply a maximum
force of 200 kN, was installed in a hole drilled inside the
rock mass and was used to load the drapery system through
a rounded 1.5 m diameter, spherical-cap-shaped load distrib-
utor. The jack force was applied to the net with an inclina-
tion of 458, which was considered to be a reference value
for standard testing because it is the average value among
the dip of downslope sliding joints. The jack was fixed to
the rock slope at the head of the hole through a collar and a
cylindrical coupling pin, in such a way that the breech could
move a few degrees for force-balancing purposes, thereby
avoiding piston-rod bending (Fig. 9). It was connected
through a ball joint to a spherical-cap steel load distributor:
this shape was chosen to transfer an evenly distributed ho-
mogeneous load and to avoid overstressed areas and sharp
points, which could hook and damage the tested product,
thus making the obtained results difficult to be interpreted
and compared.
The test was carried out according to the following proce-
dure:
the drapery system was installed on the vertical slope
through the installed bolts as it is usually done in practice
the jack was activated and the rod came out and pushed
the spherical cap against the mesh product
the test was stopped when the meshes or the cables of the
Fig. 11. Schematic drawing of the HEA panel and photo of the
connection condition at the test site.
Fig. 12. Photo and schematic drawing of the double-twisted wire
mesh. The wire has a diameter of 3 mm and the D value of the
elementary mesh is 80 mm.
Fig. 13. Picture of the HEA tested panel as installed at the test site.
LL, lower left; LR, lower right; UL, upper left; UR, upper right.
Fig. 14. Double-twisted wire mesh drapery system installed at the
test site with crossed reinforcing cables (test No. 7). LL, lower left;
LR, lower right; UL, upper left; UR, upper right.
Fig. 15. Double-twisted wire mesh drapery system installed at the
test site with subhorizontal reinforcing cables (test No. 8). LL,
lower left; LR, lower right; UL, upper left; UR, upper right.
312 Can. Geotech. J. Vol. 46, 2009
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tested product failed, when the jack exerted its maximum
pressure or when the jack reached its maximum rod
stroke.
The system shown in Fig. 10 allows the real behaviour of
the drapery system to be understood and also allows the
evaluation of the loaddisplacement curve of the installed
drapery system and other performance indicators of the sys-
tem behaviour, such as the force induced on the bolts and
the most appropriate cables to be used for the system, thus
permitting the design optimization.
Testing
Tests were carried out on different types of drapery systems
made of steel cable net panels (HEA panels) and double-
twisted wire meshes, which are also installed as fixed drapery
systems (Table 2). The HEA panels (Fig. 11) used are manu-
factured from a 10 mm diameter cable with a metallic core, an
allowable tensile strength of 63 kN (the cable is a 6 19 WS
with reference to European codes EN 12385 and EN 10264-2),
and different elementary mesh sizes: 300 mm 300 mm and
400 mm 400 mm. The net panel is formed by winding the
single steel cable back and forth along a predetermined path
to create the grid. This cable is secured at each intersection
with a knot obtained by looping a pair of 3 mm steel wires
with a strength of about 400 N/mm
2
. The two bindings tightly
envelop the cables as they cross each other. The cables that
form the mesh are closed by an aluminium-swaged connection
with a resistance of no less than 90% of the cable breaking
load. The panel cable is usually connected to a perimeter ca-
ble, which closes the panel edges, has a 16 mm diameter, and
facilitates the in situ assembly of the system. The perimeter ca-
ble was not installed in the tests so that the deformability, the
strength of the mesh, and the maximum force transmitted to
the anchorages, could be tested directly without any interfer-
ence from the perimeter cable (Fig. 11). The panels are then
linked together by a 10 mm diameter cable with a metallic
core that sews the meshes of the two adjacent panels. The
double-twisted wire mesh is made of steel woven wire (3 mm
diameter), with a tensile strength ranging between 350 and
550 N/mm
2
, manufactured to form a hexagonal-shaped mesh
(Fig. 12). The steel wire is heavily galvanized with a galfan al-
loy (zinc, aluminium, and misch metal alloy). Two adjacent
mesh panels are then linked together with metallic clips.
The HEA panels to be tested were fixed to the slope and
the bolt tip was inserted into the corner mesh (Fig. 11) as is
usually done in practice. These points were then fixed with
square steel plates (150 mm 150 mm) and tightened with
a nut (Figs. 11, 13). Similar cable panels were placed around
the tested panels to have the same boundary conditions: the
lateral panels were laced together and to the central panel
with 10 mm diameter cables. The fixed drapery system with
a double-twisted mesh was installed as usually done in prac-
tice and was reinforced by installing 10 mm diameter cables
to a load of 3 kN directly connected to the bolt pattern. Two
different layouts of the reinforcing cables were chosen: the
first one to form a cross over the tested mesh portion (test
No. 7, Fig. 14) and the second one with subhorizontal cables
(test No. 8, Fig. 15). The simple mesh drapery system (test
No. 9) was only connected with boundary cables located at
the top and bottom of the slope; therefore, these cables were
at a distance of 6 m.
The following parameters were monitored during the
tests: the total forces acting on the upper left (UL) and the
Fig. 16. Example of the HEA panel behaviour during test No. 3 after (a) 30 s, (b) 60 s, (c) 120 s, and (d) 180 s from the beginning of the
test.
Fig. 17. Loaddisplacement curve measured during tests (Table 2):
12 on HEA panels with mesh 400 mm 400 mm (dasheddotted
lines); 36 on HEA panels with mesh 300 mm 300 mm (solid
lines), and results of the laboratory test Nos. 1 and 2 (dashed lines)
(Table 1).
Bertolo et al. 313
Published by NRC Research Press
lower left (LL) anchors; the displacement, normal to the
slope, of the central point between the upper left (UL) and
the upper right (UR) anchors of the central square of the
setup system; the jack rod displacement; and the load ap-
plied by the jack. All the tests were stopped when the jack
reached the maximum force of 200 kN or the maximum al-
lowed displacement (measured orthogonally to the original
plane of the panel at the centre of the load distributor) of
about 1500 mm (Fig. 16). Owing to the results of all the
tested systems, it was possible to obtain the force
displacement curve that describes their behaviour under real
boundary conditions. From the tests on the HEA panels, it
can be seen that after the first stage where the panel deforms
under very low loads while the cables of the mesh are ten-
sioned, the curve starts to rise in a steeper and in an almost
linear way; that is, the panel is able to react against the fall-
ing rock mass by stopping its movement (Fig. 17). These
curves show that, at real job sites, it is very difficult to ten-
sion mesh panels and cables to apply a pre-load to the face
to confine the rock blocks; therefore, these systems gener-
ally act as passive systems (from a structural point of view)
by supporting the load transmitted by the already falling
block. If the results obtained with the panels with a
300 mm 300 mm mesh and with a 400 mm 400 mm
mesh are compared, it is clear that the second type of mesh
is more deformable than the first one. After all the tests on
HEA panels, no deformations were observed in the central
point between the UL and the UR anchors. This result
means that the zone stressed by the falling block is mainly
the portion of the mesh confined by the four surrounding an-
chorages. The forces measured on the confining anchorages
in the tests are summarized in Table 3, which shows that the
applied force is regularly distributed over the anchor points
around the panel stressed by the load distributor. During all
the tests, it was seen that the mesh squares near the anchors
and in the region between the loading frame and the anchors
were very deformed, resulting in a romboedrical shape
(Figs. 18, 19). The meshes were stretched in the direction
of the centre of the load distributor, forcing the knot to slip
(but neither the panel cables nor the knots broke at any
point). The importance of the real flexible boundary condi-
tions is demonstrated by the observation that the lateral pan-
els followed the central panel movement during the test, but
no relevant local deformations on the cable or on the knots
were observed. If the full-scale obtained curves and the lab-
oratory curves obtained by Bonati and Galimberti (2004) are
compared, it is clear that the real boundary condition gives
more deformable curves than the laboratory tests for both a
complete connection of the meshes with the frame and for a
connection of only eight points at the panel edges.
The tests on the double-twisted wire mesh installed as a
fixed drapery system (test Nos. 7 and 8) or as a simple
Table 3. Forces applied on anchorages. LL, lower left; UL, upper left.
Anchorage UL Anchorage LL Confining cables
Test
No.
Max. applied
force (kN) Max. axial force (kN)
Max. tangential
force (kN)
Max. axial
force (kN)
Max. tangential
force (kN) Force (kN)
1 143 Dynamometer broken (due
to large displacement)
25 60 10
2 180 Dynamometers not installed 6570 57
3 180 Dynamometer broken (due
to large displacement)
37 70 10
4 185 70 30 Dynamometers
not installed
Dynamometers
not installed

5 200 Dynamometers not installed Dynamometers

not installed
Dynamometers
not installed
Dynamometers
not installed

6 196 Dynamometers not installed Dynamometers

not installed
Dynamometers
not installed
Dynamometers
not installed

7 15 23 22.5 67 0 20 (pretension 3 kN)

8 38 5 12 7 0 40 (pretension 3 kN),
lower cable
9 14 5.5 0 1 0 0
Fig. 18. Test effects on the HEA panel after test No. 3: (a) lateral view of the mesh panel after the jack has been retracted; (b) frontal view
of the mesh panel after the jack has been retracted; (c) knots that have slipped.
314 Can. Geotech. J. Vol. 46, 2009
Published by NRC Research Press
mesh drapery system (test No. 9) show that this mesh is
much more deformable than the cable panels. It was there-
fore impossible to reach the maximum jack force with the
test device, because the mesh exhibited a large plastic defor-
mation at a low applied force (Fig. 20), reaching the maxi-
mum allowable displacement. After test Nos. 7, 8, and 9,
practically no elastic recovery was observed and the mesh
maintained its deformed shape even when the load distribu-
tor was retracted (Figs. 21, 22). Few breaks of the wire were
observed and in particular, local ruptures near the anchors
and local deformations of the elementary meshes were re-
corded. When crossed cables were used, the load distributor
was deflected by the cables after only 200 mm of displace-
ment and the test was stopped to prevent the damage of the
jack (Fig. 23). This result shows that when using this geom-
etry, it is important to take into account, at the design stage,
that the block could slip below the cables. Large deforma-
tions at a very low load were also observed when testing
the simple drapery system (test No. 9, Fig. 24), which is in
good agreement with previous test results (Muhunthan et al.
2005; Sasiharan et al. 2006).
Fig. 20. Loaddisplacement curve measured during test Nos. 7, 8,
and 9 on double-twisted wire mesh (Table 2) compared with the
results of laboratory test No. 3 (Table 1).
Fig. 21. Geometry of the panel at the end of test No. 8 (Table 2).
Notice the large deformation allowed by double-twisted wire mesh.
Fig. 19. Position of the slipped knot after test Nos. (a) 1, (b) 3, and
(c) 4.
Bertolo et al. 315
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Conclusions
For the correct design procedure of a drapery system, it is
important to understand the real behaviour of the overall sys-
tem the assembly of the wire mesh or the cable panel, the
cables and bolts, and the forces applied to the rock bolts
taking into account the way that they are usually installed by
the workers (usually climbers suspended by ropes). It is also
clear that these relevant data cannot be obtained from tests
of individual system components because the boundary con-
ditions of the system greatly influence test results. It is nec-
essary to develop full-scale test procedures to take into
account real boundary conditions. The proposed test proce-
dure supplies the full-scale behaviour of the tested product
and allows experimental loaddisplacement curves to be de-
termined in a simple and accurate way.
This is exactly what engineers need to design drapery sys-
tems, as the knowledge of how much a mesh deforms under
a defined load is a key value for the evaluation of the be-
haviour at a serviceability limit state of a system. Further-
more, the field test allows different products to be tested in
the same configuration or the same product to be installed in
different configurations (e.g., with different boundary condi-
tions), thus reproducing what happens on site and allowing
for easy comparison of the results. Finally, the procedure
also gives useful information on the plastic deformation of
the product, the anchor load, and the load on the reinforcing
elements, such as the cables, thus permitting their correct
design (anchor length and diameter). The tests that have
been carried out show that the situation obtained in the real
installations can be different to that observed in laboratory
tests and that usually larger deformations occur before the
system starts to react against the moving block. This is due
to installation problems that are unavoidable in practice.
Therefore, for the correct design of a drapery system, it is
necessary to take into account the real displacementload
curve of the whole system and to consider that, usually be-
fore reacting, the mesh can reach large displacements, thus
allowing the detachment of the block from the slope and
therefore, changing the load application direction and value.
On the other hand, laboratory tests are easier to perform,
control, and monitor; and their results therefore permit a
greater reproducibility. The proposed full-scale device per-
mits the results to be compared and permits finding of the
correction factors that can be used to take into account the
real site conditions.
Acknowledgments
This study was financially supported by Officine Macca-
ferri S.p.A. within a research project coordinated by Prof.
D. Peila and, partly, by Italian Ministry of Research and
University (PRIN 2007). The Officine Maccaferri S.p.A.
and Geosistemi S.n.c. technicians are gratefully acknowl-
edged for their help during the tests. Special thanks are due
to Dr. Giorgio Giacchetti and Eng. Bruno Rossi who gener-
ously shared their ideas and suggestions. The authors have
contributed to the same extent to the development of this pa-
per. The test site is managed jointly by DITAG Politec-
nico di Torino (Torino, Italy) and Officine Maccaferri
S.p.A. (Bologna, Italy).
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