Modelling the mechanical interaction between flowing materials and retaining wire structures

In many industrial or civil engineering applications, design of structural elements may require analysing the mechanical interaction between a flowing material and an open structure made of a metallic mesh. This paper presents some theoretical results, first in a two-dimensional case and then extended to a three-dimensional context. In particular, we establish that the distribution of forces applied to a wire structure by a flowing material whose behaviour is viscous does not depend upon the viscosity of the material. Further numerical computations provide valuable elements to confirm these results. An application to the case of a snowpack interacting with an avalanche net structure is presented, focusing on the fundamental numerical consequences resulting from the mechanical analysis.