Feasibility of Newton's cradle coupled with particle image velocimetry to examine the rockfall impact-energy-absorbing material

The Rock Shed with energy-absorbing system have been used to prevent the slope rockfall disaster in recent years. To study the effect of energy-absorbing system, an expensive and disposable full-scale test was usually adopted. This study was effort to develop a new technique to examine the characteristics of energy-absorbing material using Newton's cradle model coupled with contact and non-contact measurements. The two contact measurement device, accelerometer and dynamic load cell, was embedded in cradle spheres. During the testing, non-contact measurement method, particle image velocimetry (PIV), was synchronized conducted. Therefore, the local/global displacement and acceleration field with respect to energy-absorbing characteristics of material subjected to impact force can be obtained. In this study, the Expandable Polystyrene (EPS) was used as an energy-absorbing material to test the feasibility of the proposed method.