3D DDA Research Articles

The three-dimensional Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (3D DDA) and its application to rock toppling.

Since the orientations of discontinuities in the field are not truly perpendicular to the two dimensional (2D) blocks of simulation, the applications of 2D discontinuous deformation analysis (2D DDA) computations have limited accuracy. In order to simulate the three dimensional (3D) block behaviors more accurately, Shi (2001) developed the 3D DDA theory to the blocks with general shape. In this paper, the basic formulations of contributed components of 3D DDA are presented briefly, and a new 3D DDA program developed by the authors is applied to rock-slope toppling failure at the Amatoribashi-Nishi site to demonstrate the capability of this new method. The results show the ability of 3D DDA to study the mechanisms of slope failure.