Investigation of the Frost-Induced Shallow Alpine Rockfall Process Using 3D FDEM
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT: Increasing rockfall activities in alpine areas have been observed under the global climate change circumstance. One widely accepted explanation of the alpine rockfall is that the warming and thawing of ice-rich bedrock permafrost decreases effective shear strength and destabilizes rock substrates in unusual hot summers. However, small but frequent shallow collapses are also widely observed in mountainous areas when the temperature decreases in late autumn or cold winter. The research work presented herein proposes a numerical framework for simulating the frost heaving/cracking process and revealing the related shallow alpine rockfall mechanism, based on the three-dimensional (3D) combined finite discrete element method (FDEM), where complex coupled thermal-mechanical processes at low-temperature are considered, e.g., the heat transfer, water-ice transition, ice-rock interaction, and cracking. Results suggest that shallow collapses are observed when the temperature decreases in late autumn or cold winter. Cracks initiate and propagate in the rock mass, driven by the ice-rock interaction in cold seasons, deteriorate the structure stability and induce shallow rockfall. Knowledge of long-term thermal/water evolution of a rock slope therefore provides valuable insight into progressive rock deformation and related alpine rockfall hazards. 1. BACKGROUND Increasing rockfall activities in alpine areas have been observed under the global climate change circumstance (Harris et al. 2009; Ravanel and Deline 2011), and are linked to the frost heaving/cracking behavior (Hallet 2006; Draebing and Krautblatter 2019). One wildly accepted explanation of the alpine rockfall is that the warming and thawing of ice-rich bedrock permafrost decreases effective shear strength and destabilize rock substrates in unusual hot summers (Gruber et al. 2004; Hasler et al. 2012). However, small but frequent shallow collapses are also widely observed in mountainous areas when the temperature decreases in late autumn or cold winter (Gruber and Haeberli 2007; Wu et al. 2021). Frost cracking is hypothesized to play an important role in the destabilization of steep permafrost (Matsuoka and Murton 2008), which can be inferred from the evidence that ice is common in fractures of bedrock and the fresh detachment scars of rockfall. Therefore, understanding the frost heaving/cracking mechanism is critical to shallow rockfall disasters in cold regions. To address this knowledge gap, a 3D numerical framework is developed to study the frost heaving and cracking process in fractured rock masses and further investigate the shallow rockfall mechanism based on the 3D FDEM (Munjiza 2004), which takes the advantage of simulating both continuum and discontinuum behavior.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".