ABSTRACT
The theory of impact mechanics is used in a wide variety of fields (Goldsmith, 1960; Stronge, 2000) and builds on earlier work carried out by Sir Isaac Newton (Newton, 1687) and others such as Poisson and Hertz in the 19th century. The theories generally apply to the impact between two bodies, made of different materials, that are both translating and rotating, have unequal masses, and are moving in three-dimensional space. For rock falls, the impact conditions are somewhat simplified because one of the bodies (the slope) is stationary and has infinite mass. However, the roughness of the slope and irregularity of the rock falls introduce complexities in the modeling that can be accounted for by probabilistic analyses. Furthermore, the theory needs to account for the condition that the two bodies may not be of the same material.
