in this lecture number three I'm going

to be discussing the properties of

intact rock as the basic building block

of rock materials that we deal with in

rock engineering in the first two

lectures of the series I discussed the

development of rock engineering and the

art of tunneling just to lay the general

foundations for the subject we call

today rock engineering I want to move on

now and in the third and fourth videos

talk about the collection preparation

and sampling of intact rock and rock

masses in order to establish the

properties that we need to design rock

structures so we'll start with the

background to this first title slide

which is a setup for a tunnel

investigation in the Rocky Mountains in

British Columbia and going back about 45

years I remember visiting a site for a

proposed hydroelectric project and

looking at a chaotic massive core in a

coal box

and asking the designer what the

criterion for acceptability was and he

said if we get 25 percent core recovery

the rocks good to go we can build a

tunnel in it well we've come a long way

since then and today with much better

equipment high quality facilities

careful drilling we can get a hundred

percent core recovery through from

almost any type of drilling operation

one of the big changes was that instead

of paying for length of core drilled we

now pay for core recovery and so there's

a big incentive on the drilling

contractor to actually produce core so

this slide is of a high quality drilling

setup for a dam investigation and the

next one is for an underground drilling

operation in

underground obviously you're working

with very limited space and you need

versatile and largely automated

equipment in order to make it work but

core recovery is our primary method for

collection of samples because in general

most of the rock sites that we work on

will be covered with overburden and

material deposited material we have to

get through that into the into the rock

itself in many sites today we would have

literally kilometers of core and this is

one in Chile for an open-pit mine

project where you see the core laid out

in a shed there in the Atacama Desert

and for logging and an investigation in

addition to recovering the core today we

tend to have the use of devices called

televiewers which can be lowered down

the hole and which give us very precise

images of the inside of the hole and the

orientation of those images so we can

interpret a great deal more than we

could say 20 years ago and that forms

the basis for our understanding of the

rock mass just a short of typically what

you would see on surface on the upper

left-hand side of the slide and that is

inadequate for the kind of information

that we need so we need to get core and

you see on the right-hand side

very good core going down to very poor

core and we have to recover all of that

and interpret it and the lower-left

photograph is of an underground

exploration tunnel which we sometimes

have the luxury of having in underground

projects just to digress for a moment

and talk about the necessity for

high-quality storage of core the

upper-left photograph shows a good core

storage facility in a mining project

down below it is core that's been left

out in the tropical Sun and rain

in core boxes for rather too long and on

the right vandals have got at the core

storage facility which was insecure and

obviously the frustrated geologist there

is not going to get too much out of core

interpretation I shot of a general call

through a large depth of of rock and you

see a treasure trove of information

there that forms the basis for our

interpretation of rock mass properties

that we will use later in design there

are times when you come across

situations like this where this is an

intubated sedimentary series of

sandstone siltstone and mud stone and

you see on the on the left-hand side

call immediately after recovery from

their boho looking pretty good six

months later and although stored in a

core shed the mud stones and the silt

stones have effectively degenerated into

soil so it's sometimes necessary to do

testing immediately and and even testing

on-site in extreme situations but it's

certainly necessary to photograph

photograph the core carefully for every

drilling run has has been completed core

can tell us a great deal other than what

the rock is from the discontinuities the

frequency and the distribution of the

discontinuities that you cover euro

cover and sometimes in a high-stress

environment we see this phenomena which

is core disking as the diamond bit

passes through the core the stresses at

the end of the boho created little

spoiling which gives you these core

discs and that indicates the potential

down the road for spoiling in other

situations such as this one this is a

copper deposit and there's hydrothermal

alteration of the porphyry copper

material and that creates micro defects

these are discontinuities which don't

which aren't long enough to go right

through the core would obviously have a

major impact

on the rock in tech drop properties just

a few shots of some drilling facilities

that one might come across on the left

hand side the laboratory setup where you

might want to take oriented core to

study anisotropic rock mask behavior and

on the right a fairly hazardous

operation over over the Columbia River

River in British Columbia for a dam

foundation investigation and sometimes

we go large the this is a calyx machine

that drills core of one meter diameter

the hole is large enough for a rather

slim geologist to go down and have a

look at it and on the right is a course

showing a bidding surface in a dam site

investigation in Australia where the

horizontal bidding surfaces in the

foundation were critical to the

stability of the dam and had to be

investigated now I see around as I

travel around a lot of preparation done

using very elaborate equipment in fact

all you really need to prepare course

core samples for testing is a lathe

fitted with a tool post grinder the tool

post grinder is is on the left there and

you can see the core samples shown by

the red arrow with a diamond impregnated

blade running across it and by running

that plate right across the the core

with both the blade and the core

rotating you get a very clean cut and if

you run it across the center you end up

with a perfectly flat surface and that's

generally adequate for most of our

specimen preparation you really don't

need anything beyond that the upper

photograph there shows the dimple at the

centre before you've run the blade

across and the lower right shows that

once that's been done a very simple test

is simply to hold up the core end with

it with a high-precision straightedge a

steel ruler and to look at it against

the bright light and if you see any

light then

and the core is not flat the end of the

core is not flat but that's really all

you need to do nothing more than that

sometimes we need to produce core of a

specific size shapes and I'll talk in a

moment about dumbbell or dumb bone

specimens and their their use in testing

and those are also prepared on a lathe

and what you see here is a is a slightly

more robust diamond impregnated wheel

being driven across the specimen and

following a profile that's a steel

profile at the back she marked profile

follower and that produces a very

precise shape in the inner core which we

use for testing of tensile strength now

rock is is rather different from some of

the other materials that we deal with in

engineering unlike metals which tend to

have rather similar strength in both

tensile and compressive loading rock is

very different it's very strong in

compression and very weak in tension and

by studying thousands of test specimens

we've been able to plot as you see in

that slide a range of curves where you

can see that the tensile strength marked

in the centre of the of the curves there

ranges from about 10 to about 30 so

that's the ratio of compressive to

tensile strength so for very strong rock

the compressive strength is about 30

times the tensile strength what you're

looking at there by the way is the is a

plot of the major principle stress which

is the stress along the axis of the

specimen which causes failure divided by

the uniaxial compressive strength of the

specimen against the confining pressure

or the minor principle stress so the the

stress is surrounding the specimen that

the confinement that allows the rock to

increase in strength and those curves

are very very typical of all the rocks

that we classify as rock quite different

for soils which behavior only

differently but for the rocks that we

deal with those curves are typical and

they fit the whole spectrum of rocks

that we deal with and we'll be

discussing that further throughout these

next two lectures in order to obtain the

the results shown in that slide we need

to do different kinds of testing the

first one is uniaxial compressive

strength where you simply test the core

in one direction along its axis and load

it until it fails and that is your

uniaxial compressive strength which is

probably the most abundant piece of

information that we have in the

literature and which enables us to

pinpoint and form the pivot for most of

our discussions the apparatus shown

there is designed to apply confining

pressure which is generally high

pressure oil surrounding the specimen

and it's simply a steel cylinder with a

rubber membrane surrounding the specimen

and that then is good for very high

confining pressures so that we can

define the curve going upwards from the

uniaxial compressive strength and the

specimen shown by the arrow there which

is in tri-axial compression and that is

that is the most important test that we

need to do people have asked me how many

specimens can you do how many specimens

do you need in order to define that

curve and the answer is the more the

better you need to go up to confining

stresses of about half the uniaxial

compressive strength beyond that the

rock deforms plastically and it no

longer conforms to this curve but three

tests for example is not enough because

your enemy

one outlier and the fitting process goes

out of the window so five is a minimum

but the more the merrier that's a

photograph of the other cell with one of

the end caps removed and you can see the

oil in the sleeve the beauty of this

particular cell which has been around

for a very long time now is that it does

not require drainage between tests

that's a very messy process as you can

imagine you have to protect the specimen

from the from the oil or the water

whatever you're pressurizing fluid it is

because otherwise you generate pore

pressures in the specimen which changed

its characteristics so the specimen has

to be dry and it's a great facility to

be able to keep the oil in place before

and after testing you just slide the

specimen out I didn't mention that we

can also attach strain gauges these are

little wire grids which are glued onto

the specimen and you see in the specimen

behind the the patterns their wires

coming out and those will go through a

gap in the in the end plate of the

specimen and allow you to connect up to

electronic equipment so that you can

measure the deformation of a special we

need both the strength and the

deformation characteristics of the

intact rock and the rock masses for

design purposes now another very

important test in an intact Rock and

this only applies to intact rock is

tensile testing we need to know the

tensile strength of the rock for certain

purposes if we're designing a

tunnel-boring machine for example the

failure process is one of brittle

tensile spalling the the cutters at the

end of the tunnel boring machine

actually induce very high compression

which causes tensile spalling to occur

and that's the process of cutting so we

need to know a great deal about the

tensile strength of rock materials

and the equipment that I've used for

many many years is illustrated here it's

a dog bone or a dumbbell specimen which

is is held in a very simple sleeve with

adjustable neoprene rings that allow you

to to control the leakage past them a

little bit of leakage doesn't matter and

say if you put oil and the high pressure

there and this the specimen is sleeved

with latex rubber sleeve to keep it

isolated from me

pressurizing fluid then that generates

in the center of the specimen a

compressive radial compressive force but

because of the difference between the

area of the end pieces and the core it

also generates tensile stresses along

the specimen and that is an ideal way of

carrying out tests as shown by the

specimen with a radar arrow there where

you have surrounding circumferential

compression and axial tension and that

enables us to define the lower part of

the failure envelope now people find

that to be rather cumbersome and various

alternatives have been developed

including one called a Brazilian test

where a disc is loaded between two

points across its diameter and that

causes tensile failure to propagate

across the disc I don't I accept that as

a valid fundamental test because it's a

very complicated failure process and

you're not measuring the tensile

strength directly you have to interpret

and I I will only accept for this kind

of fundamental definition tests where

you can carry it where you can compute

the strength by dividing the load by the

cross-sectional area so you calculate

stress directly now if you do want to do

indirect testing such as Brazilian

testing or point load testing which is

another type of test then it's necessary

to calibrate that

equipment the personnel and the

rock-type on site for that particular

project otherwise you're going to be

mislead if you simply try and put in

correlations that have been published 20

years ago by somebody expect to get very

poor results so I prefer to work with

direct measurements of this sort

there is another variation on the theme

which was done a couple of years ago by

geologists Ramsey and Chester and what

they did is reconfigure the the

tri-axial test and in the little way

they used a dog bone specimen as you see

and they wrapped around the the dog bone

in the gap between the outer rubber

membrane and the core plasticine or

modeling clay and what happens then is

as you apply the confining pressure the

plasticine fails plastically with zero

volume change and it provides confining

pressure and loads the ends of the

specimen to generate tensile stresses

and they got very very good results on

tests on Carrera marble and I've given

the paper that describes us so that is a

is probably a simple way of doing it

then the equipment that I used to use

because most people would have a

tri-axial cell available anyway now the

type of equipment that you need to to

carry out these tests ranges from very

simple shown on the left this is a field

lab in Chile and it's it's the kind of

equipment you would see in a concrete

lab anywhere in the world a jack and and

some measuring gauges and you simply

pump up the jack until the specimen

fails and and that's it that's the one

extreme the other extreme is shown on

the right which is a machine which has

controlled stiffness facilities so it

measures the deformation of this of the

specimen and you can actually stop the

test at any predefined point and look at

the propagation of fracture and develop

what is called a complete stress-strain

curve so you can get over the top after

failure and look at what happens to the

broken pieces of rock after its failed

either of those is acceptable it's a

question of of what you need and what

your budget is to a certain extent this

is a piece of equipment that is made in

Italy and which is typical of the type

of equipment that would be adequate for

any relatively small lab were you doing

this kind of testing and what we're

talking about here is testing for use in

design so it's not fundamental Rock

Engineering or rock mechanics research

where you're looking at propagation of

micro cracks or acoustic emissions or

things that we do in what you could

almost call rock physics this time this

type of testing I'm describing is for

engineering purposes it's for the design

of engineering structures and so what we

want is is lots of reliable information

as simple as possible so this type of

equipment is really all that we need we

need to incorporate another property and

that is shear strength of

discontinuities this is a a joint which

was induced by tectonic forces during

placement of the material and you'll see

that it's very rough and it passes right

through the core of the specimen and

joints or faults or shear zones all of

the structural discontinuities that

we'll deal with in the next lecture

clearly have properties that are

important for us to establish some of

these are very slick and and slick

incited if it's a bedding surface that's

been shared some of them like this are

very rough and very strong so in the

early days and that's in that Imperial

College between 1970 and 1975 we tried

to test the full-scale personal specimen

so this machine you see there is capable

of testing a specimen of 30 centimeters

by 50 centimeters with loads of about a

hundred tons in both directions it's

very expensive equipment it's very

expensive to do the tests

and we came to the conclusion pretty

quickly that this is not the right way

to go and so today most of the testing

tends to be done in two stages you do a

small-scale test with equipment like

this which is a piece of laboratory

equipment simple dead weight applying Li

a suit for Chrome the the normal load

and the hydraulic jack applying the

sheer load and the specimen is cut and

ground before testing so that you're

trying to determine its basic friction

angle or residual friction angle you can

reverse the shearing and that is the one

element that we put into the assessment

of the shear strength which is a

fundamental property that we need to

know of the discontinuity surfaces

here's another piece of equipment in the

field which is in this case a reversible

sure machine so you see the apparatus in

the middle of a picture has two

hydraulic jacks in either direction so

you can simply reverse the the the

direction of the test and grind the

surface down to its residual strength so

to the residual strength of the of the

rock surface you then add the roughness

and Barton and show B have published

methods for doing this and have given

typical profiles from which you can

judge the amount of roughness that you

add and a set of equations that I've

plotted these out here to show you how a

very smooth surface there that the the

lower black line coincides with the

basic friction angle of that particular

rock material and a very wavy profile on

the red line on the outside gives you a

very much higher shear strength and it's

adequate to do this and the advantages

you can do it at the scale of the

problem so it could apply to 10

centimeters of core or 50 centimeters of

rough joint in the field because you can

you can measure that by various devices

and so it is

it's possible to scale it up in terms of

to match the scale of the problem that

you're dealing with as I've said earlier

on there are many more sophisticated

things that we can do and for

fundamental research into Rock fracture

and other processes of rock engineering

and indeed concrete and ceramics which

behave the same kind of laws as as does

rock because concrete is a is a man-made

rock if you like a weak one we're not

talking about those techniques in this

series of lectures what we're talking

about is is practical engineering for

design work and so what we need is a lot

of reliable data quantity so that we can

do statistical evaluations and as you'll

see in the later lectures the question

of reliability analysis or probability

analysis is fundamental to all that we

do and on the right there I've plotted

three distribution curves the black one

in the center is for normal mild steel

the kind that you would have in and

rebar and the coefficient of variation

which is the ratio of the standard

deviation to the mean is six percent so

even for a relatively crude engineering

material like mild steel it's very

tightly defined it's a man-made material

we know precisely what is properties are

and you can open a handbook written in

1960 if you like and it'll give you the

properties which are the same today as

they were then so it's a very well

controlled material concrete is that is

the middle curve and the coefficient of

variation typically is about 12% it's

less reliable and then steel obviously

because it's it's a mixture of various

components but it's still tightly

defined and concrete can be very

carefully designed and very precisely

specified over a whole range of

properties Rock doesn't give us that

luxury we get what we get and we have to

live with it so we have no opportunity

to change the character of a much

material and on the left-hand side there

you see a core of granite which is one

of the better materials that we get to

deal with a very uniform material but

even with the best testing equipment the

best lab and the best specimens we still

have a coefficient of variation of 20%

there and that's reality so that we have

to be able to recognize that our testing

has to aim at a large number of

specimens from which we can obtain

quickly and they could economically

these distribution curves which we can

then incorporate into later analyses

thank you for your attention

you