A new testing station for rock impact on full-scale structures : rock engineering in hazardous geo-environments

12th ISRM Congress, BEIJING, CHINE, 16-/10/2011 - 21/10/2011; The behaviour of civil engineering infrastructure when submitted to direct or indirect rock impact is not well known due to difficulties to study such phenomena at full-scale. The French institute of science and technology for transport, development and networks (Ifsttar, previously LCPC) built a new testing station dedicated to this topic, in order to perform full-scale experiments. This new test facility, located in the French Alps, is able to drop heavy loads (up to 20,000 kg) from the top of a cliff down onto various structures in order to test their resistance to big impacts and study their dynamical behaviour at this high energy level. A reinforced concrete beam was subjected to direct and indirect impacts in the frame of the European FP7 research project ISTIMES. The analysis of the first results will allow evaluating the effects of rock falls on structure and its foundations and investigate the degree of damage.