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The landslide triggered by earthquakes can cause severe infrastructure losses or even fatalities. The high-steep rock slide is the most common type of landslide in the earthquake area. In an earthquake, the ground moves randomly in all directions, two horizontal directions (East-West (EW) direction, North-South (NS) direction) and one vertical direction (Up-Down (UD) direction). Even though extensive studies have been carried out on the earthquake-triggered landslide, the effects of each single seismic wave and the three-directional seismic waves are not considered. This study aims to evaluate the effects of different types of the seismic waves on the dynamic response and failure behavior of the high-steep rock slide. To investigate the effects of each single seismic wave and three-directional seismic wave, this study presents a numerical model with four types of seismic waves, e.g., East-West (EW) direction, North-South (NS) direction, Up-Down (UD) direction, and three-directional wave (EW_NS_UD). The numerical results revealed that the types of the seismic waves have significantly different effects on the dynamic process, failure behavior, run-out distance, velocity, and deposition of the high-steep rock slide.

The rockfall process is characterized by bounces of a block on the ground. The coefficient of restitution (COR), which indicates the degree of rockfall energy dissipation, has a significant effect on the rockfall trajectory. The 3-dimensional Distinct Element Code (3DEC) is an effective tool to study the rockfall trajectory, and the damping can reflect the COR in numerical modeling. However, the relationship between damping and COR is not understood. A field test is numerically modelled to investigate the correspondence between damping and COR. A series of damping–COR correspondences are obtained and compared with the field test and its previous numerical simulation to verify the rationality of the correspondences. Then, the damping–COR correspondence is adopted in a typical rockslide in Yunnan province, China. The numerical results show that the proposed method is in good agreement with practical engineering. This study provides a new method for predicting rockfall trajectory.

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Rockfall triggered by earthquakes can cause severe infrastructure losses and even fatalities. The flexible protective barrier is an efficient rockfall protection system that has been widely used against rockfall. This studyproposed a novel approach to simulate a field test of rockfall impacting the flexible barrier, and the simulation results showed an excellent match with the field test results. Based on this approach, the seismic loading was applied to the numerical model, and four types of seismic loading were adopted, e.g., non-seismic, x-directional seismic, y-directional seismic, and z-directional seismic. This study aims at investigating the dynamic behavior of the flexible protective barrier under different seismic loading during the rockfall impact process. The following findings can be obtained from the simulation results. First of all, the seismic loading can increase the maximum elongation and decrease the final elongation of the flexible protective barrier comparing to non-seismic loading. Second, the largest deformation area of the protective barrier is at the diagonal position when x-directional seismic loading was applied, which is at the vertical bisector position when y-directional and z-directional seismic loading was applied. Third, the maximum elongation of the protective barrier decreased with the increasing seismic wave period. But in general, the amplitude and period of seismic waves have negligible effects on the elongation, maximum normal stress, and maximum shear stress of the flexible protective barrier.