Temporal Evolution of the Force Exerted by Dry Granular Masses Impacting on Rigid Sheltering Structures

In this paper, the Discrete Element approach is employed to study the evolution with time of the impact force exerted by dry granular flows on rigid obstacles and to better understand the impact mechanism. The dry granular mass is initially positioned in front of the wall with an assigned uniform velocity and porosity and the evolution with time of the impact force is evaluated. In particular, the influence of both mass initial porosity and front inclination on the impact force evolution has been investigated. From a design point of view, the results integrate the formula that was previously introduced by the authors for the maximum impact force, by adding information about its time evolution.