A 132.70-m-high tower (above foundation) has been successfully completed at Tenerife Island. The foundation of the tower, a 2-mthick reinforced concrete slab, is supported by jointed, vesicular and weathered basalt, and scoria. A three-dimensional, elastic finite element program has permitted to calculate the displacements of the tower and the stresses in the slab. The installation of rod exten...

Based on the kinematic approach of limit analysis, a full set of upper bound solutions for the stability of homogeneous rock slopes subjected to tension cracks are obtained. The generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion is employed to describe the non-linear strength envelope of rocks. In this paper, critical failure mechanisms are determined for cracks of known depth but unspecified location, c...

Disc cutter is Full face rock tunnel boring machine (TBM) important rock breaking tool, cutting heat generation has an important influence on cutter life, disc cutter cutting temperature characteristic research be imperative. Based on heat conduction theory to establish disc cutter cutting temperature heat conduction model, and derive its solution; analyze influence on disc cutter cutting tempe...

This paper discusses Coulomb failure criteria for brittle deformation of intact rock and fault gouge. Data are presented from laboratory experiments designed to identify the critical gouge layer thickness required to effect a transition from the standard Coulomb criterion to a modified failure law (referred to as Coulomb plasticity) appropriate for simple shear of a gouge layer. Experiments wer...