Abstract
The shear behavior of rock mass significantly depends upon the surface roughness of rock joints which is generally characterized by the anisotropy characteristic and the scale effect. The large-scale natural rock joint surfaces, at Qingshi Town, southeast of Changshan County, Zhejiang Province, China, were used as a case study to analyze the roughness characteristics. A statistical assessment of joint roughness coefficient (JRC) indicated the roughness anisotropy of different sized rock joints. The lower limit (JRCmean-σ) was regarded as the determinate information, and the difference between lower and upper limits represented indeterminate information. The neutrosophic number (NN) was calculated to express the various JRC values. The parametric equations for JRC anisotropic ellipse were presented based on the JRC statistical assessment of joint profiles of various orientations. The JRC values of different sized joint samples were then quantitatively described by the neutrosophic function. Finally, a neutrosophic parameter ψ for evaluating the scale effect on the surface roughness anisotropy was introduced using the ratio of maximum directional roughness to minimum directional roughness. The case study indicates that the proposed method has the superiority in moving forward from subjective assessment to quantitative and objective analysis on anisotropy characteristic and scale effect of joint surface roughness.
Highlights
Joint roughness is one of the most important parameters for understanding the shear behavior of rock joints [1,2,3,4,5]
Since Barton [6] first introduced the joint roughness coefficient (JRC) for quantifying rock joint roughness, various roughness parameters have been established for roughness characterization [7,8,9,10,11,12]
The objectives of this paper are as follows: (1) presenting some basic operations of neutrosophic number (NN) and new neutrosophic function with NNs; (2) developing the parametric equations for JRC anisotropic ellipse to characterize the joint profiles in various orientations; (3) presenting a neutrosophic function with NNs to describe the JRC values of different sized joint samples; and (4) developing a neutrosophic parameter ψ to evaluate the scale effect on the surface roughness anisotropy using the ratio of maximum directional roughness to minimum directional roughness
Summary
Joint roughness is one of the most important parameters for understanding the shear behavior of rock joints [1,2,3,4,5]. A large number of researchers have attempted to determine the scale dependency of joint surface roughness by relating the roughness parameters to the joint sample size. The statistical analysis of the directional JRC values of different sized rock joint samples may disclose the scale effect of joint roughness. The objectives of this paper are as follows: (1) presenting some basic operations of NNs and new neutrosophic function with NNs; (2) developing the parametric equations for JRC anisotropic ellipse to characterize the joint profiles in various orientations; (3) presenting a neutrosophic function with NNs to describe the JRC values of different sized joint samples; and (4) developing a neutrosophic parameter ψ to evaluate the scale effect on the surface roughness anisotropy using the ratio of maximum directional roughness to minimum directional roughness
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