SEISMIC STABILITY ANALYSIS OF SLOPE IN JOINTED ROCK USING DISTINCT ELEMENT METHOD

Abstract

The numerical behaviour of a jointed rock mass is strongly, and sometimes dramatically, affected by the behaviour of the discontinuities present in jointed rock mass. In many cases, preferential failures are dominated or defined by the natural discontinuities present in the rock mass. The numerical methods are mostly used for analyses of rock engineering problems. Distinct element method (DEM) is a powerful approach in modeling the behavior of fracture rock mass. This method can account for large displacement and rotation of rock blocks and is more useful for the field of rock engineering. Other methods like Finite element method, boundary element methods etc. can attempt to model the discontinuities but this methods gives the limited representation of jointed rock mass. The present work is an attempt to use the distinct element method to evaluate the displacements in the rock slope. Two dimensional distinct element code (UDEC) has been used for the analyses. The effect of joint parameters (cohesion and friction angle) on stability of slope is studied. Effect of shear stiffness on slope stability is also studied. The results are presented in the form of displacement