ROCKFALLS: IN SITU TEST, KINEMATIC SIMULATION AND MITIGATION MEASURES – SASSO FARINACCIO CASE STUDY

This research deals with the analysis of rockfall motion and the importance of kinematic simulations as well as in situ tests in designing of protection measures. The study area is a talus slope located in Northern Italy (Provence of Sondrio), where rockfalls frequently occur. The positions and dimensions of fallen blocks were measured and used in the calibration process, performed through the back-analysis approach. The calibrated values of restitution coefficients were compared with those obtained from in situ tests, which were carried out on the examined slope. Looking at the resulting rock fall hazard, the bidimensional kinematic simulations were performed in order to individuate the most suitable location and dimensions of mitigation measures

Rock Mass Rating spatial estimation by geostatistical analysis

This work aims to estimate the Rock Mass Rating of 200km2 area of the Italian Central Alps, along San Giacomo Valley (province of Sondrio). The regional geological setting is related to the Pennidic Nappe arrangement, which is characterized by the emplacement of sub-horizontal gneissic bodies, separated by meta-sedimentary cover units. The resulting RMR map can be a useful tool to forecast the quality of outcropping rock masses as well as to derive their geomechanical behaviour. Almost 100 geomechanical field surveys have been carried out in the research area, in order to characterize the outcropping rock masses; afterwards rock mass quality indexes have been evaluated in each surveyed site. In order to estimate the Rock Mass Rating values in un-sampled locations, different geostatistical techniques (kriging and simulations) have been applied, using both bi-dimensional and almost three-dimensional approaches. The validation process shows that kriging tends to produce smoothened distributions, while conditional simulations allow respecting local extreme values. Although geostatistical analysis reveals that geomechanical properties show spatial correlations, it is to remind that rock mass quality is strongly related to its geological and structural history

TOWARDS THE COMPREHENSION OF ROCKFALL MOTION, WITH THE AID OF IN SITU TESTS

Rockfalls frequently occur in Alpine areas, creating serious risks to population and buildings; the protection measures against rockfalls cannot be adequately designed unless the comprehensive understanding of rockfall phenomenon. Some experimental rockfall tests have been performed on a talus slope in Grosina Valley (northern Italy), with the aim to check the reliability of common simulation methods and to analyse the motion of falling blocks. First, a-priori kinematic simulations have been performed, and, after the rockfall tests, the results have been compared with the real stopping positions of blocks. Afterwards, the recorded trajectories of falling blocks have been analysed, allowing the calculation of the motion parameters of falling blocks. The motion of blocks was mainly characterized by rebounds, therefore particular attention has been paid to restitution coefficients, which describe the loss of energy during the impact and greatly affect the results of rockfall simulations. Although the talus slope features are quite constant, an unexpected wide range of restitution coefficients results from the movies: the variability is greater than that one of bibliography, moreover normal restitution coefficients are extremely high (they often overpass the unit). The qualitative relationships between restitution coefficients and slope features, falling block characteristics and pre-impact motion conditions have been searched and described

Geomechanical surveys and geostatistical analyses in Valchiavenna (Italian Central Alps)

The present study concerns the forecast of geomechanical features in rock masses and how mechanical properties can be regarded as regionalized variables. It considers an area of about 200 km2, extended in the Italian Central Alps along the Valchiavenna Valley (SO) - San Giacomo and Bregaglia valleys - where different civil and mining works are present. The regional geological setting is related to the Pennidic Nappe arrangement, characterized by the emplacement of sub-horizontal gneissic bodies resulting from the Mesoalpine isoclinalic folding of crystalline basements (\u201cTamb\uf2\u201d and \u201cSuretta\u201d Units) emplaced throw East and separated by metasedimentary cover units. More than one hundred detailed structural and geomechanical field surveys, mainly located in San Giacomo Valley, were carried out in order to characterize the rock masses, in accordance with the I.S.R.M. suggested methods. The procedure allowed to identify the number of joint sets and their average orientations, supplying a quantitative description of the discontinuities in terms of spacing, persistence, roughness, aperture, filling, wall strength and weathering. From the collected data the rock mass quality indexes have been evaluated in each surveyed site. Geostatistical methods have been applied to study the spatial distribution of the main rock masses characteristics, such as joint set orientation, fracture intensity and joint spacing, being the direct survey data local. Where no data are available the rock mass features have been estimated, the results obtained by kriging and conditional simulation techniques are presented

Measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of Y(1S) and Y(2S) mesons in PbPb collisions at √S^{S}NN = 5.02 TeV

The second-order Fourier coefficients (υ$_{2}$) characterizing the azimuthal distributions of Υ(1S) and Υ(2S) mesons produced in PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV are studied. The Υmesons are reconstructed in their dimuon decay channel, as measured by the CMS detector. The collected data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 1.7 nb$^{-1}$. The scalar product method is used to extract the υ$_{2}$ coefficients of the azimuthal distributions. Results are reported for the rapidity range |y| < 2.4, in the transverse momentum interval 0 < p$_{T}$ < 50 GeV/c, and in three centrality ranges of 10–30%, 30–50% and 50–90%. In contrast to the J/ψ mesons, the measured υ$_{2}$ values for the Υ mesons are found to be consistent with zero

Performance of the CMS Level-1 trigger in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

At the start of Run 2 in 2015, the LHC delivered proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13\TeV. During Run 2 (years 2015–2018) the LHC eventually reached a luminosity of 2.1× 10$^{34}$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$, almost three times that reached during Run 1 (2009–2013) and a factor of two larger than the LHC design value, leading to events with up to a mean of about 50 simultaneous inelastic proton-proton collisions per bunch crossing (pileup). The CMS Level-1 trigger was upgraded prior to 2016 to improve the selection of physics events in the challenging conditions posed by the second run of the LHC. This paper describes the performance of the CMS Level-1 trigger upgrade during the data taking period of 2016–2018. The upgraded trigger implements pattern recognition and boosted decision tree regression techniques for muon reconstruction, includes pileup subtraction for jets and energy sums, and incorporates pileup-dependent isolation requirements for electrons and tau leptons. In addition, the new trigger calculates high-level quantities such as the invariant mass of pairs of reconstructed particles. The upgrade reduces the trigger rate from background processes and improves the trigger efficiency for a wide variety of physics signals

Measurement of prompt D0^{0} and D‾\overline{D}0^{0} meson azimuthal anisotropy and search for strong electric fields in PbPb collisions at root SNN\sqrt{S_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

The strong Coulomb field created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is expected to produce a rapiditydependent difference (Av2) in the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution (elliptic flow, v2) between D0 (uc) and D0 (uc) mesons. Motivated by the search for evidence of this field, the CMS detector at the LHC is used to perform the first measurement of Av2. The rapidity-averaged value is found to be (Av2) = 0.001 ? 0.001 (stat)? 0.003 (syst) in PbPb collisions at ?sNN = 5.02 TeV. In addition, the influence of the collision geometry is explored by measuring the D0 and D0mesons v2 and triangular flow coefficient (v3) as functions of rapidity, transverse momentum (pT), and event centrality (a measure of the overlap of the two Pb nuclei). A clear centrality dependence of prompt D0 meson v2 values is observed, while the v3 is largely independent of centrality. These trends are consistent with expectations of flow driven by the initial-state geometry. ? 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY licens

Measurement of the Y(1S) pair production cross section and search for resonances decaying to Y(1S)μ⁺μ⁻ in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

The fiducial cross section for Y(1S)pair production in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeVin the region where both Y(1S)mesons have an absolute rapidity below 2.0 is measured to be 79 ± 11 (stat) ±6 (syst) ±3 (B)pbassuming the mesons are produced unpolarized. The last uncertainty corresponds to the uncertainty in the Y(1S)meson dimuon branching fraction. The measurement is performed in the final state with four muons using proton-proton collision data collected in 2016 by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9fb$^{-1}$. This process serves as a standard model reference in a search for narrow resonances decaying to Y(1S)μ$^{+}$μ$^{-}$ in the same final state. Such a resonance could indicate the existence of a tetraquark that is a bound state of two bquarks and two b̅ antiquarks. The tetraquark search is performed for masses in the vicinity of four times the bottom quark mass, between 17.5 and 19.5GeV, while a generic search for other resonances is performed for masses between 16.5 and 27GeV. No significant excess of events compatible with a narrow resonance is observed in the data. Limits on the production cross section times branching fraction to four muons via an intermediate Y(1S)resonance are set as a function of the resonance mass

Pileup mitigation at CMS in 13 TeV data

With increasing instantaneous luminosity at the LHC come additional reconstruction challenges. At high luminosity, many collisions occur simultaneously within one proton-proton bunch crossing. The isolation of an interesting collision from the additional "pileup" collisions is needed for effective physics performance. In the CMS Collaboration, several techniques capable of mitigating the impact of these pileup collisions have been developed. Such methods include charged-hadron subtraction, pileup jet identification, isospin-based neutral particle "δβ" correction, and, most recently, pileup per particle identification. This paper surveys the performance of these techniques for jet and missing transverse momentum reconstruction, as well as muon isolation. The analysis makes use of data corresponding to 35.9 fb$^{-1}$ collected with the CMS experiment in 2016 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The performance of each algorithm is discussed for up to 70 simultaneous collisions per bunch crossing. Significant improvements are found in the identification of pileup jets, the jet energy, mass, and angular resolution, missing transverse momentum resolution, and muon isolation when using pileup per particle identification