Data on discontinuities are always necessary for design, characterization and analysis of rock structures. The time honored method of manual measurements with Brunton compass is both time consuming and often inconvenient given issues such as restricted access to measurement areas, introduction of erroneous data due to sampling difficulties and human bias, considerable safety risks since measure...

Rectangular caverns are increasingly used in underground engineering projects, the failure mechanism of rectangular cavern wall rock is significantly different as a result of the cross-sectional shape and variations in wall stress distributions. However, the conventional computational method always results in a long-winded computational process and multiple displacement solutions of internal re...

Scanline surveys consist of directional and qualitative measurements of rock discontinuities. These surveys are used in geologic and engineering investigations of fractured rock masses. This paper introduces a new MATLAB script developed for visualizing results from scanline surveys as traces in 2D and disks in 3D. The script is also able to cluster orientation data and to present statistical s...

Various geological processes such as tectonic activities develop fractures and discontinuities in the rock mass body; these, in turn, form blocks with different shapes and sizes in the rock mass body. Accurate understanding of these blocks' geometry is essential in different domains of rock and mine engineering such as determination of yield in quarries, optimization of fragmentation energy, th...

There are many ancient underground quarries in Zhejiang Province, China. Many caverns of them maintained steady more than 1000 years. Certain engineering geological condition is very important for long-term stability. In this paper, ancient underground quarries in Shepan Island are presented as a case. Shepan Island ancient large-scale underground quarry caverns are located in Sanmen County, Zh...