Flexible, light-weight wire ring-net barriers are used to stop falling rocks serving as protection for villages and roadways in mountainous regions. The steel wire-ring nets are difficult to model because of their complex geometry. The rings consist of a single steel wire strand wrapped together multiple times, and are connected to one another in a chainmail fashion to form the net. Their geometry and behavior represent a challenge to finite element modeling. This paper presents quasi-static and impact explicit FE simulation results of wire-ring net tests using an approach which relies on the general contact algorithm available in the FE code Abaqus. This approach allows a better description of the physics involved in impact problems related to rock falls.
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