Evaluation of Different Rock Failure Approaches

Mining and excavation activities are fraught with uncertainties and hence need accurate prediction of deferent forces that influence the design. There exist many rock failure criteria to establish mutual correlation among different force fields. But, no one is comprehensive to be accepted universally. In recent decades, several empirical criteria have been developed to estimate the failure strength of rock mass at insist conditions. The input data for the development of a failure criterion often comes from the intact rock tests. In this investigation, the intact rock recovered from bore hole logs were evaluated in terms of their different strength parameters. Seven established failure criteria as MohrCoulomb, Hoek-Brown, 1980; Bieniawski 1974 and modified by Yudhbir et al., 1983; Ramamurthy et al., 1995; Balmer and Sheorey 1989; Joseph et al., 2012; Bineshian et al., 2014 were considered to evaluate their applicability for the rock mass under study. Ramamurthy approach was observed to exhibit the best fit relation among those. The best fit criterion was adopted to develop site specific empirical non-linear relation