Slope Stability 2013 P.M.

Dight (ed)
2013 Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, ISBN 978-0-9870937-5-2

P.L.P. Wasantha Civil Engineering Department, Monash University, Australia

P.G. Ranjith Civil Engineering Department, Monash University, Australia
T. Xu Northeastern University, China

The Authors used Universal Distinct Element Code (UDEC) and two-dimensional Rock Failure Process
Analysis (RFPA2D) programs, which use the Discrete Element Method (DEM) approach and the Finite Element
Method (FEM) approach, respectively, to simulate the mechanical behaviour of rock-like materials with
partially-spanning joints in different geometries. The results from the two programs were compared with
the results of an experimental study, conducted on cement-mortar specimens with partially-spanning joints
in different geometries, in order to evaluate the feasibility of the two programs in simulating the mechanical
behaviour of rock-like materials with partially-spanning joints.
Three different partially-spanning joint geometrical properties, i.e. joint location, orientation and trace
length, were considered in numerical simulations using both UDEC and RFPA2D and the experimental study.
For partially-spanning joint location, both numerical programs produced reasonably consistent results with
experimental results for the variation of Uniaxial Compressive Strength (UCS) against joint location,
especially for higher values of joint location. However, considering the overall variation of UCS against joint
location we proposed that the joint location is of negligible influence on the UCS of the rock. Variations of
UCS against partially-spanning joint orientation for the experimental work and UDEC simulations were
observed to match very closely, whereas RFPA2Dresults have underestimated the UCS for all joint
orientations. The selection of continuously yielding joint constitutive model for the joints in UDEC simulation,
which is more representative of the joints used in the experimental study, can perhaps be the reason for the
more accurate replication of experimental results using UDEC. Moreover, both numerical simulations
verified the result observed in the experimental study in which the UCS of test specimens is minimal when
the partially-spanning joint is orientated at an angle of 45. The strain distribution characteristics obtained
from both numerical programs generally agreed. The fact that when the joint is oriented in 45 angle, the
influence from the joint on failure of rock is maximum and with increasing and decreasing joint orientations
from 45, the contribution from the joint for the rock failure is less. The UCS of test specimens was observed
to decrease linearly with increasing joint trace length from the results of the experimental study, and the
results of numerical simulations from both numerical programs showed a reasonably good agreement with
the experimental results. According to the strain distribution characteristics of the experimental and
numerical simulation results from both programs, relatively longer partially-spanning joints can significantly
influence the failure of test specimens, whereas samples with relatively shorter partially-spanning joints fail
with considerable rupture in the intact material. Finally, we can conclude that, while both numerical
approaches are capable of satisfactorily simulating mechanical behaviour of rock-like materials with
partially-spanning joints, UDEC (DEM approach) with its more versatile features can provide more promising
results.

Strength and deformation properties of rock are of great importance in characterising its mechanical
behaviour. The presence of discontinuities, commonly referred to as joints, is an inevitable manifestation in

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UDEC and RFPA simulations on the influence of the geometry of partially-spanning

joints on rock mechanical behaviour

P.L.P. Wasantha et al.

rock and the mechanical behaviour of rock with significant intact rock strength is largely influenced by
those joints. In these cases, joint geometrical properties such as orientation, trace length, surface
roughness, degree of interconnectivity, etc. can have marked effects on the engineering properties of rock
masses (Brown, 1970; Brown and Trollope, 1970; Yang et al., 1998; Kulatilake et al., 2001; Ramamurthy and
Arora, 1994; Ladanyi and Archambaut, 1972).
There are several experimental, numerical and analytical investigations in the literature that focused on
determining engineering properties of rock masses for designing rock structures and understanding
fundamental processes of rock behaviour. Use of numerical methods for rock mechanics and rock
engineering applications has become very popular in the last decade; as a result we now have a wide
spectrum of modelling and design techniques. Continuum and discrete methods have been widely used for
rock mechanics problems and, more recently, hybrid (both continuum and discrete) methods are also in
use. The Finite Element Method (FEM) is one of the prevalent continuum approaches, which has
widespread applications across many fields of science and engineering. FEM studies in rock mechanics are
numerous and have generally been used to characterise rock mechanical behaviour (see Ingraffea and
Heuze, 1980; Cai and Horii, 1993; Sun and Wang, 2000; Yu, 2011; Kawamoto et al., 1988). Alternatively, the
Discrete Element Method (DEM), which comes under discrete methods, has also been used for many rock
mechanics applications (see Choi, 1992; Ishida et al., 1987; Min and Jing, 2004; Gong et al., 2006). Selection
of FEM or DEM for a particular numerical simulation is completely a decision of the user and thus it is the
users prime responsibility to select the most appropriate numerical method for an application in order to
obtain the most realistic results.
We used both FEM and DEM approaches (by using 2 dimensional Rock Failure Process Analysis (RFPA2D)
and Universal Distinct Element Method (UDEC) programs, respectively) to investigate the influence of
different geometrical properties of partially-spanning joints on the mechanical behaviour of rock-like
materials under uniaxial compression. This paper compares the results of FEM and DEM analyses with the
corresponding experimental results in order to evaluate the feasibility of the two approaches for simulating
mechanical behaviour of rock-like materials with partially-spanning joints.

Results of numerical simulations using both UDEC and RFPA2D were compared with the results of
corresponding experimental study and forthcoming sections explicitly explain the experimental work and
numerical simulation procedures.

Results of the experimental work of Wasantha et al. (2012) were used in this paper. The experimental work
considered testing on cylindrical cement-mortar (as a model material to rock) specimens with a partiallyspanning joint in different geometrical arrangements under uniaxial compression. Partially-spanning joints
were embedded into the test specimens using water-jet cutting and joint surfaces were rough. Three
different joint geometrical properties were considered, i.e. orientation, trace length and location and in
each test specimen the joint was filled using a plaster of Paris. Joint geometries produced for different
geometrical properties are shown in Figure 1.
It should be noted that in each case when one property is varied, the other joint geometrical properties
remained unchanged. Experimental results basically report the peak Uniaxial Compressive Strength (UCS)
variation against different joint geometrical properties and deformational characteristics measured in
terms of the strain distribution on the sample surface using an ARAMIS camera system (ARAMIS camera is a
non-contact optical 3D deformation measuring system, which can track the fine movement of particles on
the sample surface by allocating coordinates to the image pixels).

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(a)

(b)

(c)

UDEC is a two-dimensional program that assumes out-of-plane thickness of one unit and it can simulate the
response of discontinuous media under either static or dynamic loading conditions. When modelling
jointed rock masses in UDEC, it is required to discretise the problem domain into polygons. Thus, to
perform analyses of rock masses, which contain partially-spanning (or non-persistent) joints, some type of
fictitious joints are required to create polygons. However, those fictitious joints should behave as the block
material (intact rock) such that their influence is insignificant. Kulatilake et al. (1992) defined some rules to
derive material properties for those fictitious joints whereby they will behave similar to the block material.

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P.L.P. Wasantha et al.

We used MohrCoulomb failure criterion with a tension cutoff for both block material and fictitious joints
and followed the Kulatilake et al. (1992) specifications as shown below to assign material properties to
fictitious joints.
Strength parameters should be the same for both intact rock and fictitious joints.
Joint shear stiffness (JKS) for fictitious joints should be selected such that the ratio of block
material shear modulus (G) to JKS (G/JKS) lies between 0.008-0.012.
Joint normal stiffness (JKN) should be selected such that the JKN to JKS ratio (JKN/JKS) lies
between 2 and 3.
Material properties assigned for the block material and fictitious joints are shown in Table 1.

Block Material

Fictitious Joints

Density (kg/m3)

2004

JKS (GPa/m)

241

Bulk modulus (GPa)

7.22

JKN (GPa/m)

602.5

Shear modulus (GPa)

2.41

Tensile stress (MPa)

Tensile stress (MPa)

Cohesion (MPa)

7.9

Cohesion (MPa)

7.9

Friction angle ()

39

Friction angle ()

39

In the experimental work, the joint surfaces were made rough using water-jet cutting. Hence, the
MohrCoulomb joint constitutive model will not accurately represent the joint behaviour. Therefore, we
used a Continuously Yielding joint constitutive model for the real joints and assigned material properties
are given in Table 2.

JKN (GPa/m)

JKS (GPa/m)

Joint Intrinsic
Friction Angle ()

Joint Roughness
Parameter (m)

300

150

30

0.0001

Joints in the numerical models were embedded in geometries similar to the experimental work. Numerical
experiments were conducted similar to the experimental work and more details about the numerical
modelling procedure using UDEC can be found in Wasantha et al. (2013).

RFPA is a program based on linear finite element method and we used its two-dimensional version such
that the comparison of the results with UDEC is more meaningful, as UDEC analysis is also two-dimensional.
RFPA2D has been extensively used to simulate failure process of rock as it can effectively visualise the
progressive failure (Tang and Kaiser, 1998). Heterogeneity of rock is incorporated in to the program at
meso-scale using a probabilistic variation of the mechanical properties (Tang et al., 2000). We conformed to
the Weibull probability distribution (Weibull, 1951) when assigning meso-scale material properties to the
model as inputs. Table 3 shows the meso-scale material properties assigned for the numerical simulation
with RFPA2D (the material properties in Table 3 are not the exact properties as determined from laboratory
testing. The meso-scale material properties were derived by taking the heterogeneity of the material into
consideration).

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Parameter

Block

Joint

Homogeneity index

Mean elastic modulus (GPa)

35

Mean axial strength (MPa)

130

30

Poisson ratio

0.25

0.2

Angle of internal friction ()

38

30

Tension cutoff

0.1

0.01

The numerical models were discretised into 336 168 elements whereby all the elements are square-shape
and joints were produced with geometries similar to the experimental work (Figure 1). More details about
RFPA2D simulation work can be found in Xu et al. (2013).

Experimental results were compared with the UDEC and RFPA2D results under each joint geometrical
property and the relevant discussions are presented in following sections.

Variations of UCS ratio (i.e. the ratio of UCS of a jointed-sample to the UCS of intact sample) against
different joint location values for the experimental work and numerical simulations are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows a reasonably good agreement between numerical results and experimental results for the
joint locations greater than c. 45 mm. Even though the numerical results show slightly higher UCS ratio
values at smaller joint locations (less than 45 mm), the more important observation is the overall effect of
joint location on UCS of the samples is very small (UCS ratio varies within a range of (0.250.4) for all the
joint locations in both numerical and experimental results).

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UDEC and RFPA simulations on the influence of the geometry of partially-spanning

joints on rock mechanical behaviour

P.L.P. Wasantha et al.

Variation of UCS ratio against different joint orientations for the experimental study and both numerical
simulations are shown in Figure 3.

As Figure 3 displays, UDEC results are closely matching with the experimental results, whereas RFPA2D
results are slightly less than the experimental results at all joint orientations. This could perhaps be the
selection of continuously yielding joint constitutive model for real joints in UDEC simulations, which is more
representative of the joints produced in the experimental study. Moreover, both UDEC and RFPA2D results
demonstrate a critical joint orientation of 45 (i.e. the joint orientation in which the UCS ratio is minimum),
which is consistent with the results of experimental study.
Strain distribution patterns at the failure observed in the experimental study (using the ARAMIS camera
system) and UDEC and RFPA2D simulations at joint orientations of 15, 45 and 75 are shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4 shows consistent results between numerical simulations and experimental study for the strain
distribution characteristics at the point of failure. In general, both numerical and experimental results agree
with the fact that the influence from the joint for the failure is a maximum with the 45 joint orientation;
and at shallower and steeper joint orientations a significant amount of rupture is taking place within the
intact material.

UCS ratio versus joint trace length ratio (i.e. the ratio of joint trace length to the sample diameter)
variations for the experimental study and two numerical simulations are shown in Figure 5.
According to Figure 5, a clear linearly decreasing trend is obvious for the variation of UCS ratio against joint
trace length ratio from both experimental and numerical results with a very close agreement between
them. Strain distribution patterns at the point of failure, obtained from both numerical simulations and the
experimental study, were compared for the cases of very short joint (i.e. trace length ratio is 0.4) and very
long joint (i.e. trace length ratio is 1.5) as shown in Figure 6.

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Orientation ARAMIS camera

UDEC

RFPA2D

15

45

75

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Trace length ratio ARAMIS camera

UDEC

P.L.P. Wasantha et al.

RFPA2D

0.4

1.5

Strain distribution characteristics of both experimental and numerical studies are consistent with the fact
that the failure is more influenced by longer joints and the contribution of relatively shorter joints on the
failure is less.

UDEC and RFPA2D numerical programs were used to simulate the mechanical behaviour of rock-like
materials with partially-spanning joints of three different joint geometrical parameters under uniaxial
compression. Results of an experimental study conducted on cement-mortar specimens with partiallyspanning joints in different geometries were compared with the numerical simulation results. Results for
the variation of UCS ratio against joint location from experimental study were in good agreement with that
of numerical simulations for higher values of joint location. However, the overall influence of joint location
on UCS ratio of test samples was observed to be negligible. UCS ratio variation against joint orientation for
experimental study showed a close matching with UDEC result, whereas the RFPA2D simulation has
underestimated the UCS of test samples. However, results of both numerical programs displayed the
minimum UCS ratio at 45 (partially-spanning) joint orientation, which is consistent with the experimental
results. Strain distribution characteristics for experimental study and numerical simulations revealed that
the failure of test samples is greatly influenced by the partially-spanning joint when it is oriented at an
angle of 45. UCS ratio of test samples was linearly decreasing with increasing joint trace length according
to the experimental results and it was further verified by the results of numerical simulations using both
numerical programs. Strain distribution characteristics showed that the contribution from a shorter joint
for the failure of test specimen is less compared to that from a relatively longer joint. Finally, using the
results of this study we can conclude that both numerical simulation programs (i.e. UDEC and RFPA2D) can
be used to satisfactorily simulate the mechanical behaviour of rock-like materials with partially-spanning
joints, however discrete element approach (i.e. UDEC) with its more versatile features can produce more
faithful results.

We highly appreciate the help from the technical staff at civil engineering laboratory, Monash University,
during the experimental testing.

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