Book Description

This book is intended as a reference book for advanced graduate students and research engineers in rock mass structural mechanics related to civil engineering, mining, etc. The term of bimrocks (bimsoils, SRM, RSA) is used to describe the mixture of fine particles and larger blocks, such as mélanges, coarse pyroclastic rocks, breccias, colluviums and alluviums, fault rocks, and conglomerates, etc. Bimrock is especially different from the general soil and rock material, and the detection of the damage and fracture is still wide open to innovative research. Globally, there is widespread interest in investigating the geomechanical behaviors of bimrocks, such as deformation and strength characteristics, damage and fracture evolution and stability prediction of bimrock construction. However, the meso-structure factors control the whole mechanical properties of bimrocks, the source of the macroscopic deformation phenomenon is the meso-structural changes. During civil or mining engineering construction, the bimrock is often exposed to complex stress disturbance, such as environmental and human-induced loading acting on rock that is cyclic in nature. Typical forms of stress disturbance include blasting vibration, earthquake, excavation, drilling and vehicle loading, etc. Usually, the stress disturbance condition is inferred as a kind of dynamic loading and differs dramatically from those under static loads. Therefore, evaluation of the mesoscopic physical and mechanical properties, together with advanced testing technique, is attractive research topics in its fatigue mechanics. As a result, comprehensive macroscopic and mesoscopic experimental investigations should be conducted to reveal the damage and fracturing mechanical behaviors of bimrock exposed to cyclic and fatigue loads.