Influência da rugosidade da encosta no estudo de queda de blocos utilizando-se a Teoria do Caos

Abstract

Mass movement such as falling blocks on rocky slopes has become a very complex and poorly studied phenomenon, involving high velocity and kinetic energy. It usually occurs suddenly and without signs of movement. Due to different parameters that can influence the final result, such as the geometry of the blocks and the slope, surface roughness, angular velocity of the blocks during launching, and the coefficients of restitution of the materials involved in the process, it is extremely difficult to analyze this phenomenon, in addition to predicting the trajectories and ranges of the blocks along the slope. Thus, this research project aims to increasingly understand the conditioning factors and the susceptibility of occurrence of this phenomenon. For this, two cases of slope profiles, convex and concave, will be studied, analyzing the influences of roughness through the probabilistic distribution of the final location of the rock blocks in this type of mass movement. Therefore, chaos theory will be applied, based on numerical simulations using the RocFall 8.018 software. This theory, studied and implemented by Ignacio (2019), Ribeiro (2020) and Araujo (2021), deals with non-linear systems, in which a small change in the initial conditions of an event can bring enormous and unpredictable consequences in long-term practice. term, which actually occurs in block fall events. The results showed that chaos theory can be applied for the analysis of the phenomenon of falling blocks, highlighting that the different types of roughness of the surfaces of the slopes significantly influence the behavior weakly or strongly chaotic. The studies indicate, for both the convex and the concave profiles, that the higher the roughness value, the greater the energy dissipation of the block - slope system, suggesting, therefore, a weakly chaotic (complex) behavior to the system. Therefore, it can be confirmed the importance of this parameter for the understanding of the phenomenon of falling blocks, and may adapt any risk mitigation projects for this type of scenario.