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Control of structural damage on the rock mass characteristics and its influence on the rock slope stability along National Highway-07, Garhwal Himalaya, India: an ensemble of discrete fracture network (DFN) and distinct element method (DEM)

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Abstract

The existing structural discontinuities such as faults, joints and cleavages in rock slopes control the rock mass properties. The presence of structural discontinuities is strongly influenced by the regional tectonic structures. The concept of damage as applied to intact rock and rock mass relates to the degradation of their strength properties. The high variability in fracture intensity and trace length has been found as one move away from the hinge zone due to damage caused by regional syncline in Garhwal Himalaya. The high in situ stresses in fold hinge zone during folding propagated the fractures utmost and result in a high frequency of mean-sized fractures. The high fracture intensity and nearly equal joint traces intersected comparatively smaller-sized blocks. Whereas the rock mass away from the damage zone (fold core) at sites 2 and 3 comprises low fracture intensity and intersects relatively larger-sized blocks. Deterministic and stochastic DFN approaches were implemented in 3DEC to model the rock mass conditions within and away from damage zone. The study provided a comprehensive insight into rock mass behavior using structural investigation and numerical modeling. The work concluded that the high fracture intensity in fold hinge zone reduced the rock mass strength, providing the kinematic freedom to blocks resulting in slope failure.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their sincere acknowledgments to the Department of Earth Sciences, IIT Roorkee, and IIT Bombay for providing the necessary laboratory and computer facilities. We would like to thank IIT Roorkee and American Geophysical Union (AGU) for providing financial support to present this work at AGU, Fall Meeting 2019, San Francisco, USA. JS extends acknowledgment to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India for providing SPM fellowship to conduct the PhD research work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India, 247667

    Jaspreet Singh & Sarada Prasad Pradhan

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee,, Roorkee, India, 247667

    Mahendra Singh & Lal Hruaikima

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  1. Jaspreet Singh
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Correspondence to Sarada Prasad Pradhan.

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Singh, J., Pradhan, S.P., Singh, M. et al. Control of structural damage on the rock mass characteristics and its influence on the rock slope stability along National Highway-07, Garhwal Himalaya, India: an ensemble of discrete fracture network (DFN) and distinct element method (DEM). Bull Eng Geol Environ 81, 96 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02575-5

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