Abstract A joint factor reflecting the distribution characteristics of columnar joints was introduced to represent the influences of joints on the strength of columnar jointed rock masses based on the nonlinear strength criterion proposed by Ramamurthy. An anisotropic strength criterion was suggested for the regular hexagonal columnar jointed rock masses with the strength nonlinearity being described with the power function. The method for calculating the joint factors of regular hexagonal columnar jointed rock masses was investigated,and the constants in the anisotropic strength criterion were determined with the uniaxial and triaxial compression results from tests simulating the columnar jointed rock masses. The experimental results on the strength of jointed rock masses published in the past literatures were used to validate the proposed strength criterion preliminarily. From the validation,it was found that the predictions from the proposed strength criterion agreed well with the experimental data,indicating that the anisotropic strength criterion described well the strength anisotropy and nonlinearity of columnar jointed rock masses.
|
|
|
|
|