ABSTRACT
Rock falls prevention in mountainous area requires risk management and also infrastructure maintenance. The estimation of potentially unstable rock masses can be obtained by a probabilistic approach (Chau et al. 2003; Hantz et al. 2003). But, with this method, it is not possible to determine when a particular rock will fall. Another approach to define the failure risk in rock masses as a function of time is to study the weathering phenomena (Matsuoka & Sakai 1999; Prick 2003). This method is more deterministic and thus more adapted to the prediction of the failure scenario of a rock. Besides, the failure scenario is related to the kinetic of cracking (Frayssines & Hantz 2006).
