Towards a Hybrid Design Approach of Anchored Drapery Systems

Anchored drapery meshes represent a worldwide adopted protective solution against rockfall. The mechanical performance of a wire mesh is evaluated through laboratory procedures in which the boundary conditions strongly differ from the ones typical of field applications. This shows that the laboratory characterization is, in general, not representative of the field behavior. In this work, referring to a double-twisted wire mesh, a simple approach allowing the extension of the laboratory characteristic values to field conditions is proposed. The approach is based on the definition of analytical relations for evaluating the effects of both the mesh's system geometry and the loading condition on the force-displacement response. These relations are derived from previously calibrated laboratory tests and are extended to different configurations on the basis of a large number of discrete element simulations. A master curve allowing the prediction of the entire force-displacement response of a general configuration of the drapery system is then defined. The results of this study can provide useful information for designing anchored drapery systems and can be easily associated with standard limit equilibrium calculations to move toward a hybrid design approach that couples forces with mesh deformations.