A Geometric Approach for Natural Rock Blocks in Engineering Structures

The spatial positions of the discontinuities and the shapes of rock blocks that are bounded into rock masses are important features that should be taken into consideration, especially to further comprehend the sliding mechanisms in rock media. Therefore, explicit representation of in situ rock mass structures is strongly required in many areas of mining and construction engineering. In this paper, a new classification of two discontinuities as a construction method is developed according to their spatial orientations and their location relative to each other. In addition, in the developed method, discontinuities were geometrically analyzed in a rectangular prism. Thus, the geometries of the possible sliding blocks in engineering structures, such as road cuts, open slopes, or dam walls founded on rock media, were produced. Several basic mathematical equations, and approaches derived from them, were used. In addition, the isometric perspective method was used to for illustrations. The results obtained from two experiment fields show the effectiveness of the proposed modeling method.