Characterization and Identification of Compressibility of Soft Rock

摘要

Identification of compressibility of soft rock has been and is still a challenging task since the early days of geotechnical engineering. Numerous techniques and procedures exist to characterize the compressibility of soil-like material and of rock-like material. However if the site stratigraphy shows alternating layers of distinct almost completely weathered and more or less soil like material and layers of rock like material these techniques can no longer be applied to assess the overall rock mass compressibility. The paper proposes a field oriented method using a combination of known characterization methods (for rock and soil materials) to describe the soft rock profile with respect to identify its overall compressibility in terms of Young's moduli. The Moduli are calculated from an averaging scheme assuming that the soft rock layers can be described by mixtures of rock-like material and soil like material. An example application is presented including a first discussion of applicability and limitations of the method.