An approach for prediction of strength and post yield behaviour for rock masses of low intact strength

Step-Path method — impact of defect occurrence, cut-off and length on shear strength in rock slopes

“…The Hoek-Brown rock mass shear strength model (Hoek & Brown 1980a, 1980b with its various enhancements and revisions, including the more recent ones for low unconfined compressive strength (UCS) strength rock masses (Carvalho et al 2007), has now been with us for 35 years. Without doubt, the Hoek-Brown approach is a most widely used method for rock slope design.…”

Characterization of bi-planar and ploughing failure mechanisms in footwall slopes using numerical modelling

“…The model effectively uses a weighted average of the shear strength of the joints and the shear strength (or tensile strength) of the intact rock through which the sliding surface develops. More recently, the Hoek-Brown failure criterion presents a means to weight the combined influence of intact rock and nonpersistent joint strength as an equivalent continuum rock mass strength (Hoek and Brown, 1997;Hoek et al, 2002;Carvalho et al, 2007). Giani (1992) provides a detailed account of a footwall slope back analysis where the toe breakout was modelled using the Hoek-Brown failure criterion.…”

Application of an Inverse Distance Weighted Anisotropic Method for Rock Quality Designation distribution in Eastern Kahang deposit, Central Iran

“…A borehole or a scanline are by their nature one dimensional. As a result, RQD values calculated using bore hole data or a scanline survey are influenced by the orientation in which the measurements are taken (horizontal or vertical) so the method does not consider calculation for the other direction [21,22]. In order to overcome the dependence of RQD on orientation, Kazi and Sen (1985) proposed the use of the Volumetric Rock Quality Designation (V. RQD) which is a three-dimensional parameter [23].…”