Experimental Investigation of Effects of Sliding Distance on Impact Force from Granular Sliding Mass to a Rigid Obstruction

Quantifying the impact force from a sliding mass is very important in risk assessment and engineering design against landslides. It gives insights into the behavior of granular flow and helps understanding the behavior of landslides. There are various parameters such as inclination angle, initial density, friction between granular flow and flow bed, and flow sliding distance, which affect impact force. A series of 2D sand flume experiments were performed to systematically investigate the effects of these parameters on impact force. In this paper the effects of sliding distance were studied by changing the location of a load measurement device along the sand flume. It was observed that depending on the inclination angle, the impact force may decrease or increase by increasing the distance between the flow origin and the obstruction (i.e., load measurement device). At inclination angles smaller than the friction angle of the sand, increasing the sliding distance will result in a reduction of the maximum impact force, while at inclination angles higher than the friction angle of the sand the impact force will increase as the sliding distance increases. In the experiments performed in this study, the maximum impact force decreased by 31% and increased by 92% at 30 and 60°, respectively, when the sliding distance was increased from 0.65 to 2.49 m.