Influence of asperity degradation on the mechanical behavior of rough rock joints under cyclic shear loading

A cyclic shear testing system was established to investigate the mechanical behavior of rough rock joints under cyclic loading conditions. Laboratory cyclic shear tests were conducted for two joint types of Hwangdeung granite and Yeosan marble: saw-cut and split tensile joints. Prior to test, the roughness of each specimen was characterized by measuring the surface topography using a laser profilometer. Several important aspects of cyclic joint behavior, such as high peak shear strength and non-linear dilation in the first loading cycle, different frictional resistance for the reversed shear loading direction, and anisotropic shear behavior and its dependence on the normal stress level were identified from the cyclic shear test results. These features and their variations in the subsequent loading cycles are mainly due to the effect of second order asperities and strength of rock material. It was also observed from experimental results that degradation of asperities under cyclic shear loading also followed the exponential degradation laws for asperity angle and the mechanism for asperity degradation would be different depending upon the shearing direction and the type of asperities. Based on the experimental results an elasto-plastic constitutive model, which can consider the degradation of second order asperities, was proposed. Numerical simulations for the monotonic and cyclic shear loading indicated agreement with the laboratory test results.