Abstract

Although characterization and numerical modeling of anisotropic rock is a longstanding difficulty in rock mechanics, development and advances are being made for anisotropic rock mechanics in spite of the hurdles associated with it. This chapter provides an overview of anisotropic rock mechanics issues and introduces a series of experimental and numerical anisotropic rock mechanics studies conducted in the past 15 years. Experimental investigations are made on elastic, thermal conductivity, seismic and permeability anisotropy of rock based on cores taken from directional coring system. The first part of numerical anisotropic rock mechanics introduces the numerical experiments to determine the compliance tensor of fractured rock mass with Discrete Fracture Network (DFN) modeled as equivalent continuum anisotropic rock. Blocky Discrete element method (DEM) is employed for this numerical experiment using three boundary conditions in two dimensions. The second part deals with representation of transversely isotropic rock using bonded-particle DEM model with smooth joint model as layers. Both deformation and strength behavior modeled by DEM showed a reasonable agreement with analytical solutions, and laboratory observations. Upscaled model applied to anisotropic foundation demonstrate that large scale application anisotropic DEM model is also feasible.