A review paper about experimental investigations on failure behaviour of non-persistent joint

Abstract

There are only few cases where cause and location of failure of a rock structure are limited to a single discontinuity. Usually several discontinuities of limited size interact and eventually form a combined shear plane where failure takes place. So, besides the discontinuities, the regions between adjacent discontinuities, which consist of strong rock and are called material or rock bridges, are of utmost importance for the shear strength of the compound failure plane. Shear behaviour of persistent and non-persistent joint are different from each other. Shear strength of rock mass containing non-persistent joints is highly affected by mechanical behavior and geometrical configuration of non-persistent joints located in a rock mass. Therefore investigation is essential to study the fundamental failures occurring in a rock bridge, for assessing anticipated and actual performances of the structures built on or in rock masses. The purpose of this review paper is to present techniques, progresses and the likely future development directions in experimental testing of non-persistent joint failure behaviour. Experimental results showed that the presence of rock bridges in not fully persistent natural discontinuity sets is a significant factor affecting the stability of rock structures. Compared with intact rocks, jointed rock masses are usually weaker, more deformable and highly anisotropic, depending upon the mechanical properties of each joint and the explicit joint positions. The joint spacing, joint persistency, number of rock joint, angle of rock joint, length of rock bridge, angle of rock bridge, normal load, scale effect and material mixture have important effect on the failure mechanism of a rock bridge.