Analysis of rock mass classifications for safer infrastructures

Abstract

In the construction of land transport infrastructures such as roads, highways, or railways, one of the factors that most determine their design is the characteristics of the terrain through which they run. Additionally, tunnels have become one of the most employed solutions to reduce the environmental impact. The characteristics of the rock mass are a vital point to decide the layout of the tunnel and the construction method to tunnel. However, the rock mass are discontinuous, anisotropic, and heterogeneous media, so their classification and knowledge are necessary for a safer design of these infrastructures.The rock mass is not an industrial material with “pre-established” properties and behaviors, but rather a natural material that needs to be analyzed, understood, and standardized. The need to understand the behavior of the rock mass has led throughout modern history to the use of different standards, which lead to the development of geomechanical classifications, with the aim of establishing a common language that translates the very advanced geological language in the macro and microgeological behavior, which is necessary to translate for applications in civil engineering. In the last decades of the 20th century, and in the present 21st, the efforts in the process of understanding the intact rock and the rock mass has been constantly increasing because a better understanding of the rock mass behavior implies a better development of projects developed in the rock mass. This paper succinctly reviews the history of rock mass classifications, their implications in rock mechanics and their applicability in the definition of behaviors as a function of natural conditions and by human action, and their direct implication in some fields of the transport infrastructures management with regard to the hazard and risks.