Characterization of Rock Mass Structure and Stability Analysis of Tunnel Using GeoSMA-3D Modeling

Analytical solution and simplified design procedure was presented for evaluating the response of existing joint rock slope subjected to excavation. In jointed rock slope engineering, the stability of rock is controlled in a sense by the number of blocks, i.e. the size, orientation and locations of the discontinuities, especially the key blocks for a given excavation geometry. Key block failures occur where blocks of rock are separated from the rest of the rock mass by discontinuities. In this research, according to block theory, the new block stability analysis model was developed through visual C++ and computer graphics. This model assumed that rock mass consists of blocks and each block is formed by particles arranged in a specific way, thus formulating a combination of block model and particle model. This software adopted vector analysis, which can simulate all excavation planes especially in the tunnel and other underground structures. It can also create three-dimensional structural model and analyze mobility of key blocks in the simulation planes by means of geometry and kinematics theory. The distribution of all key blocks and the quantitative data were analyzed by means of the newly developed program. It can be concluded that the new code was a tool for modeling blocky rock masses. Moreover, this model was verified by an example of rock masses under uniaxial loading. It was shown that numerical results agree well with the theoretical ones and laboratory tests not only for deformation process but also for the failure process.