Experimental Study on Hydromechanical Behavior of an Artificial Rock Joint with Controlled Roughness

Rock mass contains various discontinuities, such as faults, joints, and bedding planes. Among them, a joint is one of the most frequently encountered discontinuities in rock engineering applications. Generally, a joint exerts great influence on the mechanical and hydraulic behavior of rock mass, since it acts as a weak plane and as a fluid path in the rock mass. Therefore, an accurate understanding on joint characteristics is important in many projects. In-situ tests on joints are sometimes consumptive in terms of time and expenses so that the features are investigated by laboratory tests, providing fundamental properties for rock mass analyses. Although the behavior of a joint is affected by both mechanical and geometric conditions, the latter are often limited, since quantitative control on the conditions is quite complicated. In this study, artificial rock joints with various geometric conditions, i.e., joint roughness, were prepared in a quantitative manner and the hydromechanical characteristics were investigated by several laboratory experiments. Based on the results, a prediction model for hydraulic aperture was proposed in the form of ( e h / e m ) 3 = exp ( − 0.0462 c ) × ( 0.8864 ) J R C , which was a function of the mechanical aperture, joint roughness, and contact area. Relatively good agreement between the experimental results and predicted value indicated that the model is capable of estimating the hydraulic aperture properly.