A Constitutive Model for Rock Joints under Cyclic Loading

摘要

Cyclic loads are commonly encountered in geotcchnical engineering;;however most constitutive models do not account for the effect that such loads can have on the mechanical behaviour of soils and rocks. This work is concerned with the behaviour of jointed rock and, as the overall mechanical behaviour of jointed rock is usually dominated by the mechanical behaviour of the joints, it is focused on the behaviour of rock joints under cyclic loads. In particular, an extension of the existed constitutive model for cyclically loaded rock joints is presented. Variations of rock joint stiffness in both the normal and the shear directions of loading due to surface degradation are taken into account. The degradation of asperities of first and second order is considered, while a new relation is proposed for the joint stiffness in the normal direction during unloading. Numerical simulation results show good agreement of model predictions with existing experimental results.