A Study on Mechanisms of Failure in In-situ Rock Shear Tests

Abstract

The mechanisms of in-situ rock shear tests were investigated for the sake of constructing a theoretical method for the estimation of the strength of rock masses. Localized failure in the testing process was especially noticed, and it was treated with Mohr's failure criterion. The investigation consisted of experiments on gypsum models whose conditions were similar to those in in-situ rock shear tests and of stress analyses for these experiments. Theoretical interpretations of the characteristic cracking process and of the machanisms of the appearance of shear strength, measured by in-situ rock shear tests, were obtained from the results.