Pressure of Snow Avalanches against Buildings: Fid-Bau Portal

Pressure of Snow Avalanches against Buildings

Bovet, Eloise / Chiaia, Bernardino / De Biagi, Valerio / Frigo, Barbara

The paper aims to analyse the e ects of topography and building position on themagnitude of pressure exerted by snow avalanches against buildings, through a structural backanalysis and numerical uid-dynamics. Studying a real snow avalanche impact occurred in2008 which destroyed a village in Valsavarenche (Aosta Valley - IT), the attention is focused onthe avalanche ow deviation caused by the destructive interaction with a rst building, whichprotected part of a second building beyond it. By means of photographical and in situ survey, a detailed description of avalanche geometrical, dynamical and physical properties is outlined. A structural investigation, based both on debris arrangement and on measurements on theundamaged parts of buildings is also carried out. Thus, a back analysis is carried out in order to de ne collapse dynamics and to estimate theupper and the lower bound of impact pressure. Afterwards, numerical uid-dynamical analysesare performed to simulate di erent impact scenarios and to understand the e ects of obstacleson avalanche behavior: a qualitative measure of the interactions among buildings, which maymutually protect one another, is obtained.