The mechanical characteristics and orientation of joints determine the behaviour of rock masses, including the strength, the stiffness, and all forms of conduction and diffusion. Furthermore, the preferential orientation of joints renders the medium anisotropic. In turn, these properties affect the velocity and damping of propagating elastic waves. The purpose of this study is to investigate th...

Analysis of rock masses with plenty of weakness planes and joints with numerical methods based on meshes encounters difficulties. In the analysis when even only a few meshes are involved, mesh generation can consume more time and effort compared to the construction and solution of the discrete set of equations. Continuous remeshing of the domain in order to avoid the break down of the calculati...

The joint surface is widely distributed in the rock, thus leading to the nonlinear characteristics of rock mass strength and limiting the effectiveness of the linear model in reflecting characteristics. The JRC/JCS model is the nonlinear failure criterion and generally believed to describe the characteristics of joints better than other models. In order to develop the numerical program for JRC/...

The existing failure criteria to evaluate discontinuous rocks are predominatly based on the relations between principal stresses at failure. None of the criteria has a direct reference to the magnitude of deformation as a major parameter in rock Several reasons are identified indicating that the selection of peak stress as a major parameter, which is obtained through the evaluation of a failure...

The Geological Strength Index (GSI) system, proposed in 1995, is now widely used for the estimation of the rock mass strength and the rock mass deformation parameters. The GSI system concentrates on the description of two factors, rock structure and block surface conditions. The guidelines given by the GSI system are for the estimation of the peak strength parameters of jointed rock masses. The...

This paper presents a modeling approach for three-dimensional simulation of hydraulic fracturing of jointed rock. Dynardo developed a 3D-hydraulic fracturing simulator and coupled the simulator with leading edge calibration and optimization algorithms to offers the software base to optimize gas production with computer simulation. With the integrated approach, an effective 3D numerical reservoi...

A validation study of the distinct lattice spring model (DLSM) for wave propagation problems is performed. DLSM is a microstructure-based numerical model, which is meshless and has advantages in modelling dynamic problems where stress wave propagation is important. To verify the applicability of DLSM to modelling wave propagation through a discontinuous medium, the virtual wave source (VWS) met...

ABSTRACT: A number of civil engineering projects which include river valley projects, transportation projects and metro rail projects are under construction in India. Various structures, such as underground openings, powerhouse caverns, metro tunnels, dam foundations and slopes are increasingly located in/on rock formations. The rock in its natural state is a very complex material especially wh...