An improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock

© 2017 American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA). All rights reserved. While rock strength is an important input parameter in geotechnical engineering, the size effect of intact rock samples on strength has long been recognised as an issue. Conventionally, it has been believed that increase in size...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Masoumi, H., Arefi, A., Hagan, P., Roshan, H., Sharifzadeh, Mostafa
Format: Conference Paper
Published: 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68971
_version_ 1848761934403338240
author Masoumi, H.
Arefi, A.
Hagan, P.
Roshan, H.
Sharifzadeh, Mostafa
author_facet Masoumi, H.
Arefi, A.
Hagan, P.
Roshan, H.
Sharifzadeh, Mostafa
author_sort Masoumi, H.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description © 2017 American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA). All rights reserved. While rock strength is an important input parameter in geotechnical engineering, the size effect of intact rock samples on strength has long been recognised as an issue. Conventionally, it has been believed that increase in size leads to decrease in strength. A few investigations have reported different trend to that consider conventionally where the uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) follows ascending and descending behaviour. Masoumi et al. [1] investigated this behaviour from analytical and experimental viewpoints that resulted in the formulation of the unified size effect law (USEL) which accounts for the reverse size effect behaviour of intact rocks. A limitation of the current USEL is that at very large sizes, the UCS prediction by USEL tends to zero. This paper outlines an improvement to USEL to overcome this limitation based on the multifractal theory. Attributes of the improved USEL model were highlighted and verified using UCS data from different rock types. Finally, it was demonstrated that there is a good agreement between the improved USEL prediction and the experimental results.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T10:39:33Z
format Conference Paper
id curtin-20.500.11937-68971
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T10:39:33Z
publishDate 2017
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-689712018-06-29T12:27:54Z An improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock Masoumi, H. Arefi, A. Hagan, P. Roshan, H. Sharifzadeh, Mostafa © 2017 American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA). All rights reserved. While rock strength is an important input parameter in geotechnical engineering, the size effect of intact rock samples on strength has long been recognised as an issue. Conventionally, it has been believed that increase in size leads to decrease in strength. A few investigations have reported different trend to that consider conventionally where the uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) follows ascending and descending behaviour. Masoumi et al. [1] investigated this behaviour from analytical and experimental viewpoints that resulted in the formulation of the unified size effect law (USEL) which accounts for the reverse size effect behaviour of intact rocks. A limitation of the current USEL is that at very large sizes, the UCS prediction by USEL tends to zero. This paper outlines an improvement to USEL to overcome this limitation based on the multifractal theory. Attributes of the improved USEL model were highlighted and verified using UCS data from different rock types. Finally, it was demonstrated that there is a good agreement between the improved USEL prediction and the experimental results. 2017 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68971 restricted
spellingShingle Masoumi, H.
Arefi, A.
Hagan, P.
Roshan, H.
Sharifzadeh, Mostafa
An improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock
title An improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock
title_full An improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock
title_fullStr An improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock
title_full_unstemmed An improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock
title_short An improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock
title_sort improvement to unified size effect law for intact rock
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68971