How does rockfall occur?

Answer 1

Rock fall

Conditions:

Steep slope and steep cliff face, cold climate, little vegetation, Hard rock.

Process:

Free fall of rock from the steep cliff face caused by gravity, made worse by freeze thaw which loosens the rock, water enters it freezes and expands cracking the rock and a scree slope of fallen rock is formed at the bottom of the cliff.

Answer 2

There are a number of potential causes for rock falls.

In general rockfalls happen because some event occurs which acts to reduce the strength of the rockmass.

The term rockmass is used to describe the solid rock and all the bedding, joint and any other fracture planes which are spread throughout the rock and act to reduce it's strength.

Under normal conditions, the rockmass is strong enough to support itself (if it wasn't it would have already collapsed until achieving a stable state!). However if there is a change in the conditions then this can lead to failure.

So what conditions can change that may cause failure?

Pore water pressure: during periods of heavy rainfall, water infiltrates the ground and can act to increase the groundwater table. It will also flow along any fracture zones or other discontinuities in the rockmass which are permeable. Normally the self weight of the rockmass (known as the in-situstress) acts to force these discontinuities together and the roughness of their surfaces and the resultant friction acts to stop movement. However the water is relatively incompressible and so forms a small barrier between the two surfaces which acts to reduce the strength of the interface by reducing friction and the shear strength. If the alignment of the interface in question is "bad" i.e. one along which a slip or failure would result in a block of rock falling from the slope or cliff face and the pore water pressure becomes high enough to negate the frictional resistance to sliding, then a rock failure will occur.

Fractures and discontinuities also commonly have a clay infilling. The pore water can cause these clay fills to swell (and soften) and then shrink again when they dry out. These shrink swell cycles can act to reduce the friction on the interface between two rock blocks and again increase the rick of failure and a rock slide occurring.

Weathering can also act to increase the dimensions of fractures (e.g. freeze thaw weathering and frost heave) which will reduce their strength and can act to reduce stability and may contribute towards a rockfall.

Changes in the stress state: Construction or the application of a large load on the top of the slope or cliff will increase the stress within the rock in the cliff face and this may exceed the strength of the discontinuities in certain sections leading to rockfalls.

A change in the slope or cliff geometry (e.g. cutting a steeper slope into a rock face when building a road) may also lead to instability and a rockfall.

This may also be caused by undercutting in coastal cliff faces due to wave action creating a wave cut notch leading to a loss of support to the overlying rockmass causing it to collapse.

Dynamic loading: The seismic waves / vibrations caused by earthquakes, explosions (from quarrying or during the blasting used during the construction of road cuttings through rock) can act to cause rock falls.

Gas overpressure: This is a very specific problem that in the past was caused by the introduction of high explosives in the construction of road cuttings (as opposed to rail cuttings which were predominantly created in the UK before the introduction of high explosives). Road cuttings are created using blasting by drilling boreholes into the rock slope at the angle you want the final slope to be and then placing explosive in these holes. The explosives would be detonated and the rockmass fractured so that it could be more easily excavated. One unexpected side effect of this process was that the high pressure gasses generated by the explosion moved along the pre-existing fractures within the rock and acted to force them wider apart making the rockmass in the resultant face of the slope weaker than it would otherwise have been and could cause rockfalls to occur in the future.

This is no longer a problem in newer cuttings as the technique known as pre-split blasting was developed where a series of closely spaced holes are drilled and a very small amount of explosive is used to create an initial fracture surface or pre-split that also acts as the slope surface. In front of this the main holes are drilled and charges planted to fracture the rock that is to be excavated. When the main charges detonate the high pressure gasses reach the pre-split and the pressure dissipates rather than damaging the rockmass that will become the engineered rockslope.

Answer 3

Rockfall occurs when pieces of rock become detached from a cliff face or steep slope due to a variety of factors such as weathering, erosion, freeze-thaw cycles, or seismic activity. Gravity then causes these detached rocks to fall or roll downhill, posing a risk to anything in their path.

Answer 4

if a rock is loose, gravity takes over and the rock falls to the center of the mass that is the earth.