Particle-based modelling of cortical meshes for soil retaining applications

Metallic cortical wire meshes are extensively used to protect slopes and infrastructures in mountain regions. These structures are constituted by periodic patterns of steel wires and have a ductile non-linear behaviour. The installed mesh panels generally experience non-trivial boundary conditions which combined with their high deformability and the chance of local ruptures make these structures difficult to be modelled as a contin-uum. The Discrete Element Method (DEM) is particularly well suited for modelling the soil-mesh interaction problem, taking advantage of its potentials in handling large deformation, contact-detachment and interlock-ing between particles and the mesh. The mesh is modelled with two approaches and a puncture test on a single mesh panel is used for calibration. After that a simplified soil-mesh problem with a single mesh panel is con-sidered and compared with the results of a punch-mesh problem. The force-displacement behaviour experi-enced by anchors and edges of the panels are also discussed.