This book provides practicing engineers working in the field of design, construction and monitoring of rock structures such as tunnels and slopes with technical information on how to design, how to excavate and how to monitor the structures during their construction. Based on the long-term engineering experiences of the author, field measurements together with back analyses are presented as the most powerful tools in rock engineering practice. One of the purposes of field measurements is to assess the stability of the rock structures during their construction. However, field measurement results are only numbers unless they are quantitatively interpreted, a process in which back analyses play an important role. The author has developed both the concepts of “critical strain” and of the “anisotropic parameter” of rocks, which can make it possible not only to assess the stability of the structures during their construction, but also to verify the validity of design parameters by the back analysis of field measurement results during the constructions. Based on the back analysis results, the design parameters used at a design stage could be modified if necessary. This procedure is called an “Observational method”, a concept that is entirely different from that of other structures such as bridges and buildings. It is noted that in general, technical books written for practicing engineers mainly focus on empirical approaches which are based on engineers’ experiences. In this book, however, no empirical approaches will be described, instead, all the approaches are based on simple rock mechanics theory. This book is the first to describe an observational method in rock engineering practice, which implies that the potential readers of this book must be practicing engineers working on rock engineering projects.

This book provides practicing engineers working in the field of design, construction and monitoring of rock structures such as tunnels and slopes with technical information on how to design, how to excavate and how to monitor the structures during their construction. Based on the long-term engineering experiences of the author, field measurements together with back analyses are presented as the most powerful tools in rock engineering practice. One of the purposes of field measurements is to assess the stability of the rock structures during their construction. However, field measurement results are only numbers unless they are quantitatively interpreted, a process in which back analyses play an important role. The author has developed both the concepts of “critical strain” and of the “anisotropic parameter” of rocks, which can make it possible not only to assess the stability of the structures during their construction, but also to verify the validity of design parameters by the back analysis of field measurement results during the constructions. Based on the back analysis results, the design parameters used at a design stage could be modified if necessary. This procedure is called an “Observational method”, a concept that is entirely different from that of other structures such as bridges and buildings. It is noted that in general, technical books written for practicing engineers mainly focus on empirical approaches which are based on engineers’ experiences. In this book, however, no empirical approaches will be described, instead, all the approaches are based on simple rock mechanics theory. This book is the first to describe an observational method in rock engineering practice, which implies that the potential readers of this book must be practicing engineers working on rock engineering projects.

Engineers wishing to build structures on or in rock use the discipline known as rock mechanics. This discipline emerged as a subject in its own right about thirty five years ago, and has developed rapidly ever since. However, rock mechanics is still based to a large extent on analytical techniques that were originally formulated for the mechanical design of structures made from man made materials. The single most important distinction between man-made materials and the natural material rock is that rock contains fractures, of many kinds on many scales; and because the fractures - of whatever kin- represent breaks in the mechanical continuum, they are collectively termed 'discontinuities' . An understanding of the mechanical influence of these discontinuities is essential to all rock engineers. Most of the world is made of rock, and most of the rock near the surface is fractured. The fractures dominate the rock mass geometry, deformation modulus, strength, failure behaviour, permeability, and even the local magnitudes and directions of the in situ stress field. Clearly, an understanding of the presence and mechanics of the discontinuities, both singly and in the rock mass context, is therefore of paramount importance to civil, mining and petroleum engineers. Bearing this in mind, it is surprising that until now there has been no book dedicated specifically to the subject of discontinuity analysis in rock engineering.

The development of constitutive relations for geotechnical materials, with the help of numerical models, have increased notably the ability to predict and to interpret mechanical behaviour of geotechnical works. These proceedings cover the applications of computational mechanics in this area.

Rock Engineering and Rock Mechanics: Structures in and on Rock Masses covers the most important topics and state-of-the-art in the area of rock mechanics, with an emphasis on structures in and on rock masses. The 255 contributions (including 6 keynote lectures) from the 2014 ISRM European Rock Mechanics Symposium (EUROCK 2014, Vigo, Spain, 27-29 Ma

In a straightforward manner and with plenty of illustrations, this textbook approaches important design issues in rock mechanics from a mechanics of materials foundation. It addresses rock slope stability in surface excavations, shaft and tunnel stability, and entries and pillars. The book also covers three-dimensional caverns with an emphasis of b

First published in 1993. This volume is a collection of papers addressing the issue of the failure of rock engineering structures. This phenomenon occurs in different forms depending on the geometry of structure, material properties of intact rock, structure of rock mass, environmental conditions and initial state of stress.