• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2022

The mechanical and thermal properties of the rock masses can affect the performance associated with both the isolating and retarding capacities of radioactive materials within the deep geological disposal system for High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLW). In this study, the essential parameters for the site descriptive model (SDM) related to the rock mechanics and thermal properties of the HLW disposal facilities site were reviewed, and the technical background was explored through the cases of the preceding site descriptive models developed by SKB (Swedish Nuclear and Fuel Management Company), Sweden and Posiva, Finland. SKB and Posiva studied parameters essential for the investigation and evaluation of mechanical and thermal properties, and derived a rock mechanics site descriptive model for safety evaluation and construction of the HLW disposal facilities. The rock mechanics SDM includes the results obtained from investigation and evaluation of the strength and deformability of intact rocks, fractures, and fractured rock masses, as well as the geometry of large-scaled deformation zones, the small-scaled fracture network system, thermal properties of rocks, and the in situ stress distribution of the disposal site. In addition, the site descriptive model should provide the sensitivity analysis results for the input parameters, and present the results obtained from evaluation of uncertainty.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.535-570
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• 2017

There are only few cases where cause and location of failure of a rock structure are limited to a single discontinuity. Usually several discontinuities of limited size interact and eventually form a combined shear plane where failure takes place. So, besides the discontinuities, the regions between adjacent discontinuities, which consist of strong rock and are called material or rock bridges, are of utmost importance for the shear strength of the compound failure plane. Shear behaviour of persistent and non-persistent joint are different from each other. Shear strength of rock mass containing non-persistent joints is highly affected by mechanical behavior and geometrical configuration of non-persistent joints located in a rock mass. Therefore investigation is essential to study the fundamental failures occurring in a rock bridge, for assessing anticipated and actual performances of the structures built on or in rock masses. The purpose of this review paper is to present techniques, progresses and the likely future development directions in experimental testing of non-persistent joint failure behaviour. Experimental results showed that the presence of rock bridges in not fully persistent natural discontinuity sets is a significant factor affecting the stability of rock structures. Compared with intact rocks, jointed rock masses are usually weaker, more deformable and highly anisotropic, depending upon the mechanical properties of each joint and the explicit joint positions. The joint spacing, joint persistency, number of rock joint, angle of rock joint, length of rock bridge, angle of rock bridge, normal load, scale effect and material mixture have important effect on the failure mechanism of a rock bridge.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.311-321
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• 2007

Failure of underground structures in hard rocks is a function of the in-situ stress, the intact rock strength and the distribution of fractures in the rock mass. At highly stressed regime, brittle failure is often observed due to excavation-induced stress. The characteristics of brittle failure are classified as failure grade, failure initiation stress, extent of failure and depth of failure. For safety construction of underground structures, these characteristics of brittle failure with stress conditions should be understood. In this study we evaluated the relationship between the extent and depth of failure with stress conditions for failure happened model specimens through true triaxial model experiments. The extent and depth of failure were determined using visual observation and computed tomography (CT). The results indicate that the depth of failure was affected by differential stress perpendicular to the axis of tunnel. However the extent of failure was irrelevant to the stress conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.15-27
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• 2016

In this study, a series of triaxial compressive strength tests were conducted for basaltic intact rocks sampled in the northeastern onshore and offshore, southeastern offshore and northwestern offshore of Jeju Island. Hoek-Brown constants $m_i$ were estimated from the results of the triaxial compression tests, and the properties of the Hoek-Brown constants $m_i$ were investigated. In addition, the cohesion and internal friction angle, strength parameters of Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion, obtained from the results of the triaxial compression tests were compared and analyzed with those estimated from Hoek-Brown failure criterion, respectively. As results, it was found that the Hoek-Brown constant $m_i$ is deeply related to the internal friction angle. As the internal friction grows, the Hoek-Brown constant $m_i$ increases exponentially. The cohesions estimated from the Hoek-Brown failure criterion, on average, are approximately 24% higher than those obtained from the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion. The internal friction angles estimated from the Hoek-Brown failure criterion are similar to those obtained from the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.697-726
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• 2023

Brittleness as an important property of rock plays a crucial role both in the failure process of intact rock and rock mass response to excavation in engineering geological and geotechnical projects. Generally, rock brittleness indices are calculated from the mechanical properties of rocks such as uniaxial compressive strength, tensile strength and modulus of elasticity. These properties are generally determined from complicated, expensive and time-consuming tests in laboratory. For this reason, in the present research, an attempt has been made to predict the rock brittleness indices from simple, inexpensive, and quick laboratory test results namely dry unit weight, porosity, slake-durability index, P-wave velocity, Schmidt rebound hardness, and point load strength index using multiple linear regression, exponential regression, support vector machine (SVM) with various kernels, generating fuzzy inference system, and regression tree ensemble (RTE) with boosting framework. So, this could be considered as an innovation for the present research. For this purpose, the number of 39 rock samples including five igneous, twenty-six sedimentary, and eight metamorphic were collected from different regions of Iran. Mineralogical, physical and mechanical properties as well as five well known rock brittleness indices (i.e., B₁, B₂, B₃, B₄, and B₅) were measured for the selected rock samples before application of the above-mentioned machine learning techniques. The performance of the developed models was evaluated based on several statistical metrics such as mean square error, relative absolute error, root relative absolute error, determination coefficients, variance account for, mean absolute percentage error and standard deviation of the error. The comparison of the obtained results revealed that among the studied methods, SVM is the most suitable one for predicting B₁, B₂ and B₅, while RTE predicts B₃ and B₄ better than other methods.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.14 no.3 s.40
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• pp.273-285
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• 2004

The mechanical properties of the Cretaceous tuff distributed in the Goheung area were measured in the laboratory. Tuff (Goehung tuff and Palyeongsan welded tuff) in the study area is classified into vitric tuff with regard to its composition. The specific gravity, the dry density, the water content, the porosity and absorption ratio in tuffs of the study area are 2.51, $2.52(g/cm^2)$, 0.12($\%$), 4.51($\%$) and 1.91($\%$) in means, respectively. In the tuffs, dry densities are in inverse Proportion to Porosities, and absorption ratios are highly proportional with Porosities. The uniaxial compressive strengths(UCS) in the tuffs ranges from 80.4 to 208(MPa) and the average of the strength is 141.1(MPa). According to the engineering classification of intact rock (Deere & Miller, 1966), the tuffs are assigned to the high strength rocks. The point load strength index ($Is_a$) in axial test is 4.2(MPa) on the average, and the point load strength index ($Is_d$) in diametral test is 2.2(MPa) in mean, and the point load strength anisotrophic index($Ia_{(50)}$) by the ratio of $Is_a$ to $Is_d$ is 1.93. There is close linear correlation between the uniaxial compressive strength and point load strength index, and the equation representing the correlation is postulated as follows : UCS = 22 $Is_{(50)}$ +49 (MPa) (r=0.95). It is considered that this equation is a useful tool to estimate UCS for tuff in Goheung area.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.211-221
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• 2003

At Aspo hard rock laboratory in Sweden, an in-situ heater experiment called "$\"{A}"{s}"{p}"{o}$ Pillar Stability Experiment (APSE)" is prepared to assess capability to predict spatting and stability in a rock mass between deposition holes for radioactive waste. To Predict reasonably fracturing process at rock pillar under a planned configuration before testing, a boundary element code FRACOD has been applied for modelling. The code has been improved to simulate explicitly fracture evolution both at rock boundaries and in intact rocks. A new inverse stress reconstruction technique using boundary element has been also developed to transfer stress field by excavation and thermal loading into the FRACOD model. This article presents the results from predictive modelling far the planned in-situ test condition. Excavation induced stresses might cause slight fracturing in the pillar walls. Typical shear fractures have been initiated and propagated near central pillar walls during 120 days of heating, but overall rock mass remained stable under the considered configuration. The effects of pre-existing joints and properties of fractures are also discussed. It is found from the results that FRACOD can properly model essential rock spatting and propagation at deep tunnels and boreholes.at deep tunnels and boreholes.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.7-13
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• 2000

Abstract The characteristics of bed rock in the study area was classified by means of the crack coefficient estimated from the seismic velocities of in-situ and intact rocks. Various statistical methods were investigated in order to minimize the possible errors in estimating the predictive equation of blasting vibration and to enhance the determination coefficient $R^2$, for more reliable estimation. The determination coefficient showed the highest in the analysis for those groups using weighting function with the number of samples. The analysis for the weighting function employed with standard coefficient and variance also enhanced the determination coefficients significantly compared to the others, but the reliability was slightly lower than results obtained former method. Therefore the most reliable predictive equation of blasting vibration was found to be obtained from a regression analysis of the mean vibration level using the weighting of same distance groups within 15m with the same explosive charge weight per delay. The coefficients, K and n 317.4 and -1.66, respectively, when using the square root scaling, and 209.9 and -1.66, respectively, when using the cube root scaling. The analysis also showed that the square root scaling may be used in the distance less than 31m form the blast source, and the cube root scaling in the distance more than 31m for safe design.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.483-494
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• 2007

The properties of fracture system on road-cut slopes along the Busan-Ulsan express way under construction are investigated and analyzed. Fracture spacing distributions show log-normal form with extension fractures and negative exponential form with shear fractures. Straight line segments in log-log plots of cumulative fracture length indicate a power-law scaling with exponents of -1.13 in site 1, -1.01 in site 2 and -1.52 in site 3. It is likely that the stability and strength of rock mass are the lowest in site 1 as judged from the analyses of spacing, density and inter-section of fractures in three sites. In contrast, the highest efficiency of the fracture network for conducting fluid flow is seen in site 3 where the largest cluster occupies 73% through the window map. Based on the field survey data, this study modified weighting values of the RMR system using a multiple regression analysis method. The analysis result suggests a modified weighting values of the RMR parameters as follows; 18 for the intact strength of rock; 61 for RQD; 2 for spacing of discontinuities; 2 for the condition of discontinuities; and 17 for ground water.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.72-83
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• 2013

This study suggests the necessity of landscaping alternatives for the succession of Takjok(濯足) culture by considering the background and meaning of Takjok's cultural phenomenon shown in old literatures and paintings and its result is as follows. An old idiom, 'Takyoung Takjok(濯纓濯足)' implying a disinterested living attitude from the mundane world and an attitude complying with nature, has been sublimated to 'Takjokjiyu(濯足之遊)' which means living in comfortable retirement through life in seclusion(隱逸). Classical scholars immerse their feet in soft-flowing(柔軟) water for 'Mulailche(物我一體; synchronized with nature)' which is a unified condition with 'Do(道; truth)' and connected to the stage of 'Yu(遊)', a free mental state, and its nature. The cultural phenomenon of Takjok appeared in the inherited landscape paintings in the Joseon dynasty period after the late stage of Koryo. Takjok shown in 'Pal Kyung Shi'(八景詩; poetry singing for the eight scenary) was described as not a transcendent scene, but as a scenery of daily life. Dense forest and water, such as a stream with clean water, rocks, and pine trees shown in Takjok paintings have been symbolized as a seclusion space for classical scholars with higher thinking and their mental states have been more emerged. Mental pleasures called as seclusion and Takjokjiyu have been relatively emphasized in the Takjok paintings of the Joseon Dynasty period contrary to the Chinese Takjok paintings emphasizing Chung Gye(淸溪; clean stream) and Chang Rang(滄浪; high and clean wave) and strongly representing the image of 'Chung Ryu'(淸流; clean flowing water) and the veneration for antiquity. The view of nature described in the Takjok paintings represents the provision of nature as a situation and attitudes of classical scholars and implies a Taoism perspective which describes the 'do' of nature. This view of nature itself remained intact(無爲自然) with the love of mountains and water, showing a side of the zeitgeist and aesthetic consciousness of China and Joseon. The 'Takjokjiyu' of both countries has be interpreted as a symbol of personality development, behavior, life in seclusion, or transcending the mundane world and has also been accepted as a method of summer vacation in the real world. It should be considered that Takjok includes ordinary people's wisdom to resist the hot weather, as well as the classical scholar's ideal and the veneration of antiquity. From this perspective, water space, Takjok rocks, and the use of water based on the environmental supportability should be newly focused as a recreational space and it reminds us that the spirit of Takjok is a classical mental healing method.