An Analytical Study of the Bi-rock System Considering Interface Effect

Abstract

The mechanical behavior of rock mass is largely governed by the joints between the individual intact rocks due to the lower strength of the resulting imperfect interfaces. In order to investigate the influences of the joints, a bi-rock system of laterally infinite extend connected by a planary interface is well employed for mathematical convenience. The objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of imperfect interface on the mechanical behavior of bi-rock system via exact closed-form solution. Four types of idealized interfaces including perfectly bounded, sliding, bilaterally inextensible and unsinkable interface are considered. By comparison with the case of perfectly bounded interface, the contact stresses and displacements at the imperfect interface are well examined to show the influences of different joints. The solution presented in this paper can serve as limiting case bench mark to the problems of bi-rock system with more complicated and general interface, and can as well provide us preliminary prediction of the joint failures.