Abstract
For the purpose of understanding the hydraulic behaviours of rock joints undergoing shear deformations, the shearflow coupling experiments were performed. The results indicated that the macrosopic permeable characteristics are greatly affected by the microscopic structures of joint surface, and the cubic law, which is popularly used for permeability characteristics evaluation, cannot be applied where the mechanical aperture width is small in the early stage of shearing. In order to evaluate the relationship between fluid flow phenomena and aperture distribution in a rock joint, the numerical analysis based on Lattice Gas Automaton (LGA) was applied to simulate complicated microscopic flows produced by the complex boundary conditions. It was possible by the simulation method to explain the hydraulic behaviours in shear-flow coupling experiments by fluid-wall boundary interaction when water flows through a rock joint.
