Stability Analysis of Rock Slope Controlled by Major Geological Discontinuities Based on the Extended Kinematical Element Method

Excerpt

Rock mass is an aggregate structure composed of intact rock and geological discontinuities such as faults, joints, and fractures. These discontinuities play a dominant role in rock mass failure because of their lower strength compared to that of an intact rock (Zhang et al. 2006). Although there are different scale discontinuities, the potential instability of a rock slope is more sensitive to major geological discontinuities such as fault, fractured or weak zone, and strata interface at a large scale. The rock slope shear failure with major geological discontinuities involves in three typical modes (Baczynski 2000; Read and Stacey 2009), i.e., (1) Mode I, failure tends to occur where the major discontinuities have kinematic freedom to form blocks that may slide or topple; (2) Mode II, sliding along circular or quasi-circular failure paths through the intact rock, which may occur for extremely high slopes or for highly fractured/weathered rock masses; and (3) Mode III, combined failure mode of the above two mechanisms. …