Sensitivity analysis of the generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion

摘要

Recently, the Hoek-Brown failure criterion is one of the mostly used failure criterion for rockrnmass. The constants of this failure criterion depend on, among the others, the Geological Strength Index (GSI)rnand the disturbance factor (D). The purpose of this paper is to analyze the sensitivity of the various constants ofrnthis equation, which depends on the GSI value and the D factor. The results show that the Hoek-Brown constantsrnare very sensitive to both the GSI and the D factor, so to determine them exactly is very important for the rockrnengineering design.The sensitivity of the strength of the rock mass is also calculated.Thus these input parametersrncan be not determinable exactly, the results shows to take into account to use these relationships, mostly for riskrnanalysis.