Deformation and fracturing behaviour of discontinuous rock mass and damage mechanics theory

The mechanical behaviour of a rock mass is strongly affected by discontinuities such as faults and joints. In this paper, a damage mechanics theory is proposed which deals with some sets of discontinuities distributed in a rock mass, for example, joint systems. In this theory, the distributed discontinuities are characterized by a second‐order symmetric tensor, called the damage tensor. By introducing the damage concept, the deformation and fracturing behaviour of the rock mass can be reated in a framework of continuum mechanics. A numerical procedure is developed in order to implement the damage mechanics model by using the finite element method. The theory and numerical analysis are applied to several laboratory tests and a practical underground opening problem. Numerical results are compared with measured data.