The subject of this thesis forms part of a research program dealing with fractured rock masses being undertaken by the "Centre de Géologie de l'Ingénieur (CGI)" from the "Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (ENSMP)" and the "Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC)". In fractured rock masses, it is very difficult to undertake engineering works without analysing, beforehand, the f...

[1] The role of bedrock fractures and rock mass strength is often considered a primary influence on the efficiency of surface processes and the morphology of landscapes. Quantifying bedrock characteristics at hillslope scales, however, has proven difficult. Here, we present a new field‐based method for quantifying the depth and apparent density of bedrock fractures within the shallow subsurface...

In the last few decades, rock mass classification had been used intensively in engineering design. The concern arises for potential occurrence of localized or global failure due to geological (such as discontinuities, water, weathering) and non-geological construction load, vibration) factors should be taken into consideration. ability a system represent condition straightforward effective way ...

One of the most important parameters used for determining the performance of tunnel boring machines (TBMs) is their penetration rate. The parameters affecting the penetration rate can be divided in two categories. The first category is the controllable parameters such as the TBM technical characteristics, and type and geometry of the tunnel, and the second one is the uncontrollable parameters s...

It is generally accepted that the identification and characterisation of discontinuities in discontinuous rock masses is one of the most important aspects in rock mass modelling. Traditional manual field survey methods for gathering discontinuity properties are biased, hazardous, difficult and time-consuming. This paper describes a computer approach, based on terrestrial laser scan data, which ...

We report our attempts to locate the progenitor of the type Ic SN 2004gt in NGC 4038. We use high resolution HST ACS images of SN 2004gt and have compared them with deep pre-explosion HST WFPC2 F336W, F439W, F555W and F814W images. We identify the SN location on the pre-explosion frames with an accuracy of 5mas. We show that the progenitor is below the detection thresholds of all the pre-explos...