Abstract
It has been known that the mechanical behavior of rock mass strongly depends on these of discontinuities such as faults, fractures and joints. In the rock mechanics literature, several constitutive models to predict joint shear strength have been proposed focusing on effect of geometrical properties of the joint surface roughness. It is shown, however, that some of existing models have problems that these do not quantitatively reflect on geometrical properties. In our study, the statistical parameter related to the strength properties obtained from the results of the direct shear experiments is introduced and a new constitutive model to predict shear strength of rock joint is proposed.
