Using UDEC 6 and the shear-reduction method to calculate the factor-of-safety, this tutorial will show you how to analyze the stability of a simple slope containing: (1) no discrete jointing (continuum), (2) fully-continuous jointing (discrete blocks), and (3) noncontinuous, en echelon jointing.
This tutorial will show how to use the Plot Item Cutting Tool in FLAC3D 7. Creating cut plans is useful for seeing inside 3D model plots. FLAC3D cutting planes include a single-surface plane, a double-surface wedge, and a three-surface octant.
Hydraulic testing using wireline deployed water-inflated packers is becoming a common practice for groundwater characterization at mining sites.
We derive the relationships that link the general elastic properties of rock masses to the geometrical properties of fracture networks, with a special emphasis to the case of frictional crack surfaces.
We extend the well-known elastic solutions for free-slipping cracks to fractures whose plane resistance is defined by an elastic fracture (shear) stiffness ks and a stick-slip Coulomb threshold.
A major use of DFN models for industrial applications is to evaluate permeability and flow structure in hardrock aquifers from geological observations of fracture networks. The relationship between the statistical fracture density distributions and permeability has been extensively studied, but there has been little interest in the spatial structure of DFN models, which is generally assumed to be spatially random (i.e., Poisson). In this paper, we compare the predictions of Poisson DFNs to new DFN models where fractures result from a growth process defined by simplified kinematic rules for nucleation, growth, and fracture arrest.