Proceedings of the Rocscience International Conference 2025 (RIC 2025)

<Previous Article In Volume
Next Article In Volume>

Synthetic Slope Profiles to Assess Rockfall Hazard on Open Pit: Influence of Topography Uncertainties

Authors
Maddalena Marchelli1, *, Anna Giacomini2
1Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy
2Centre for Geotechnical Science and Engineering, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia
*Corresponding author. Email: maddalena.marchelli@polito.it
Corresponding Author
Maddalena Marchelli
Available Online 7 December 2025.
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_48How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Rockfall hazard; Open pit design; sensitivity analysis; realistic slope profiles
Abstract

Rockfall represents one of the most dangerous landslide phenomena, with serious impacts on infrastructure and work areas. In open pit mining, the occurrence is increased by unforeseen adverse structural conditions during mining operations or poor blasting practices. At the design stage, the geometric outlines of the benches are generally chosen to minimize the impact of rockfalls. In standard practice, trajectory analyses are conducted using the ideal initial geometry to assess potential hazards in advance and determine effective mitigation measures. During mining activities, variations from the design profile, such as crest loss, flattening of the edge, and accumulation of debris at the toe of a bench, are frequently observed. In these cases, the catch capacity of the benches is reduced, leading to potential increase of block run-out distances and impact energies. In this study, we numerically investigate the impact of uncertainties related to slope topography, using more realistic slope profiles. The results are compared with those obtained for the ideal design geometry, providing powerful insights for preliminary rockfall hazard assessment and open pit slope design. A comparison with a real case is presented.

Copyright
© 2025 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

<Previous Article In Volume
Next Article In Volume>
Volume Title
Proceedings of the Rocscience International Conference 2025 (RIC 2025)
Series
Atlantis Highlights in Engineering
Publication Date
7 December 2025
ISBN
978-94-6463-900-1
ISSN
2589-4943
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_48How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2025 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Maddalena Marchelli
AU  - Anna Giacomini
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/07
TI  - Synthetic Slope Profiles to Assess Rockfall Hazard on Open Pit: Influence of Topography Uncertainties
BT  - Proceedings of the Rocscience International Conference 2025 (RIC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 481
EP  - 489
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_48
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_48
ID  - Marchelli2025
ER  -