Alto Maipo Surface

In the area of the portal of the VA2 tunnel of the Alto Maipo project, rockfalls caused damage to the surrounding infrastructure and interruptions in operations. It was urgently necessary to find a solution that would allow working in a safe manner.

To retain rocks up to 1000 kJ of energy, Geobrugg proposed the construction of an RXE-1000 rockfall barrier with the following characteristics.

•     Height:5 meters
•     Post spacing: 10 meters
•     Anchors to the mount: 4 meters long
•     Anchors in the plate, subjected to compression: 4 meters
•     Anchors in the plate, subjected to traction: 3 meters
•     Anchors edge: 5 meters
•     120 linear meters

Engineering and placement of the barriers were carried out by Swiss company Geotest.