Abstract
A new investigation method is proposed for recording large-sized joint profiles and making statistical analyses of the joint roughness coefficient (JRC) values of the 10–300 cm sized profiles. The mechanical hand profilograph is used for joint roughness measurement due to its advantage of easy operation and high accuracy in recording joint traces. Based on the proposed method, it provides sufficient samples from various positions on the large joint profile, which allows the statistical evaluation of JRC values. A neutrosophic number (NN) is employed for revealing determinate and/or indeterminate information as it consists of determinate and indeterminate parts. Due to the uncertainty of JRC in the real world, NN is chosen to represent the JRC value, which is not only random but also a fuzzy indefinite parameter. The neutrosophic function is used to analyze and express the scale effect of joint surface roughness, and its derivative is used to describe the changing trend of the scale effect. The results show that the JRC value of the joint profile is related to the scale and has a negative effect on the surface roughness of the rock joint. The indeterminate information about the scale effect on joint roughness is described by the neutrosophic functions, and the derivative indicated that the JRC values of small samples are more sensitive than those of large-sized examples. When the length of the sample exceeds the stationarity limit of 80 cm, the roughness appears to be almost scale independent.
Highlights
Rock joint roughness plays an important role in hydraulic and mechanical characteristics of discontinuous rock masses [1,2,3,4]
It is found that roughness is usually scale dependent, and the scale effect on roughness is very important for engineering design [5]. is delivers an urgent need to more accurately determine the relationship between roughness and sample size
Ye et al [16] and Liu et al [17] studied the roughness of natural joint profiles, and the results showed that the surface roughness differs with positions of the large joint
Summary
Rock joint roughness plays an important role in hydraulic and mechanical characteristics of discontinuous rock masses [1,2,3,4]. To study the scale effect, the roughness of samples of different sizes should be measured from the same joint surface. Due to the irregular and inconsistent properties of the joint surface, it is still difficult to establish a function for quantitatively expressing the statistical results of roughness to accommodate different sample sizes. To address these issues, this study represents a new investigation method to analyze the scale dependency of rock joint surface roughness.
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