New Rock Mechanics Developments in China

This paper reviews new rock mechanics developments in China in the last ten years. A series of devices for laboratory tests, in situ tests and monitoring have been developed. Also, strength criteria based on energy and for hard rocks, progressive and anisotropic damage models, coupled THM models, new creep models, the vector sum method, reinforcement theory, and a multi-scale and non-linear thermodynamic theory were established. There have been major developments in studying zonal disintegration, rock dynamics, fractals in rock mechanics, rock fracturing process simulation methods, and intelligent rock mechanics methodology. The 3-D limit equilibrium methods, strength reduction method, FEM, BEM, NMM, Meshless method, and DDA were updated. There have been considerable efforts on mechanism understanding through lab and real time field monitoring, prediction and the mitigation of rockbursts. The need for rock engineering projects has largely promoted the development of rock mechanics; and rock mechanics has provided a practical tool to support complicated rock engineering problems. Further development of rock mechanics in China is anticipated and more applications of rock mechanics to rock engineering are expected.