Effect of rock joint roughness on its cyclic shear behavior

Rock joints are often subjected to dynamic loads induced by earthquake and blasting during mining and rock cutting. Hence, cyclic shear load can be induced along the joints and it is important to evaluate the shear behavior of rock joint under this condition. In the present study, synthetic rock joints were prepared with plaster of Paris(Po P). Regular joints were simulated by keeping regular asperity with asperity angles of 15°-15° and 30°-30°, and irregular rock joints which are closer to natural joints were replicated by keeping the asperity angles of 15°-30° and 15°-45°. The sample size and amplitude of roughness were kept the same for both regular and irregular joints which were 298 mm×298 mm×125 mm and 5 mm, respectively. Shear test was performed on these joints using a large-scale direct shear testing machine by keeping the frequency and amplitude of shear load under constant cyclic condition with different normal stress values. As expected, the shear strength of rock joints increased with the increases in the asperity angle and normal load during the first cycle of shearing or static load. With the increase of the number of shear cycles, the shear strength decreased for all the asperity angles but the rate of reduction was more in case of high asperity angles. Test results indicated that shear strength of irregular joints was higher than that of regular joints at different cycles of shearing at low normal stress. Shearing and degradation of joint asperities on regular joints were the same between loading and unloading, but different for irregular joints. Shear strength and joint degradation were more significant on the slope of asperity with higher angles on the irregular joint until two angles of asperities became equal during the cycle of shearing and it started behaving like regular joints for subsequent cycles.

An analytical solution to wellbore stability using Mogi-Coulomb failure criterion

Deep wellbores/boreholes are generally drilled into rocks for oil and gas exploration,monitoring of tectonic stresses purposes.Wellbore and tunnel in depth are generally in true triaxial stress state,even if the ground is under axisymmetric loading condition.Stability of such wellbores is very critical and collapse of wellbore must be avoided.Mogi-Coulomb failure criterion is a better representation of rock strength under true triaxial condition.In this paper,an analytical solution is proposed using Mogi-Coulomb failure criterion.The solution is obtained for rock mass exhibiting elastic-perfectly plastic or elastic-brittle-plastic behaviour considering in-plane isotropic stresses.The proposed solution is then compared with exact analytical solution for incompressible material and experimental results of thickwall cylinder.It is shown that the results obtained by the proposed analytical solution are in good agreement with the experimental results and exact analytical solution.A reduction of about 13%e20%in plastic zone from the proposed closed-form solution is observed,as compared to the results from the finite element method(FEM)based Mohr-Coulomb criterion.Next,the influences of various parameters such as Poisson’s ratio,internal pressure(mud weight),dilation angle,and out-of-plane stress are studied in terms of stress and deformation responses of wellbore.The results of the parametric study reveal that variation in the out-of-plane stress has an inverse relation with the radius of plastic zone.Poisson’s ratio does not have an appreciable influence on the tangential stress,radial stress and radial deformation.Dilation angle has a direct relation with the deformation.Internal pressure is found to have an inverse relation with the radial deformation and the radius of plastic zone.