Simulation of rock moisture and weathering conditions in Gesäuse National Park

The surveys carried out in this thesis aimed to introduce the simulation of rock moisture and weathering conditions on rock walls to the prevailing natural conditions. For this purpose, the influence of the area-specific rain and snow precipitation on the hygrothermal rock conditions in the Gesäuse National Park was investigated. By means of impact rain-specific climatic surveys in the Gsenggraben and with snow modelling carried out in the ESCIMO.spread program, the prevailing natural conditions in the investigation area could be integrated into the WUFI simulation program. WUFI, originally developed for buildings, offers a wealth of operational possibilities that make targeted simulations feasible. The adjustments made primarily led to an increased moisture input into the simulated system, which results in about 70 % of the consideration of the snow influence on the conditions prevailing in the rock. This ratio is also reflected in the simulations carried out in order to detect exposure- and off-road inclination-specific influences in which four orientations north, east, south and west were made at a slope of 70 and 90. Throughout, a recognizable influence of the increasingly occurring impact on pore saturation and the weathering-relevant parameters can be determined. This is consistently surpassed by the snowfall flowing into the simulation. Due to the approximation to the natural conditions in the rock, a higher pore saturation level as well as an increased weathering potential can be detected. For the weathering itself, the ice lens theory could be established as a decisive process, which comes closer to the real processes in the rock than the classic frost change theory.