Passive defence structures against dense snow avalanches. Experimental analysis

The article presents an experimental investigation performed at the Hydraulic Laboratory of the University of Trent in order to analyse the behaviour of some passive defence structures used in the practice of environmental engineering in order to slow down dense snow avalanches. The research considers retarding mounds and teeth, taken as single elements and in a system of three elements arranged in two lines. The article describes the experimental setup, that can simulate the real phenomena following the Froude similarity with a geometrical scale of about 1:100, and gives some criteria for the estimation of the impact force against front and rear works . It is described the most efficient works layout and it is shown that maximum efficiency occurs when maximum dimensionless force occurs