1st Croatian Conference on Earthquake Engineering 1CroCEE 2021

In the last ten years only, several thousand earthquakes above a magnitude of 6 have occurred worldwide (USGS). With urbanisation growing incessantly, the risk to people and the damage to infrastructure from seismic events is increasing. The importance of including the seismic load case for building construction and retrofitting has long been recognised and is implemented around the world. Infrastructure protection against natural hazards, such as snow, rock and landslides, should as well take seismicity into account. The reaction force onto the subsystem is dependent of weight and absolute acceleration. A stiffer system therefore can be easier accelerated than a flexible system, and will sustain more damage, such as buckling, shearing and cracking. The less protection measures weigh and the more flexible they are, the less is the risk of a failure. This paper presents three case studies, in Japan, Chile and the US, where flexible high tensile steel wire meshes for slope stabilization were successfully engaged while for example shotcrete grating crib works, right next to the flexible systems, failed. Different type of mesh systems exists, this contribution will only take into account the Tecco system developed by Swiss Company Geobrugg AG. Finally, it is explained how the dimensioning software Ruvolum for Tecco Slope Stabilization is taking the seismic load case into account.