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Practice Questions

Practice Questions

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52 views3 pages

Practice Questions

Practice Questions

Uploaded by

TLHOKOMELO MOLOI
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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GLEN 323 Practice Questions

1. What is rock mechanics?


2. Give 5 applications of rock mechanics (i.e. areas where rock
mechanics is applied)
3. What tasks a Rock Engineer/Geotechnical Engineering can perform
in a mining company?
4. Give 5 geological factors influencing on rock and rock mass
behaviour; explain one of them.
5. How do you define discontinuity? Explain briefly why rock masses
are discontinuous, anisotropic and heterogeneous.
6. What are the principal physical and mechanical properties of rocks?
How do we determine them?
7. Explain the differences between scalar, vector and tensor quantities.
Why is stress a tensor quantity?
8. How are normal and shear stress components plotted on Mohr's
circle?
9. What is a principal stress plane? What is a principal stress?
10. Why are unsupported rock excavation surfaces principal stress
planes? Why is the principal stress component acting normal to
unsupported excavation surfaces zero?
11. Sketch a Mohr’s circle for these states of stress: uniaxial stress,
biaxial stress, triaxial stress, polyaxial stress, pure shear stress,
hydrostatic stress?
12. Explain the stress-strain relationship in rock in terms of strength and
deformability. Illustrate a brittle and ductile behaviour
13. Draw the stress-strain curve in uniaxial compression, how are the
elastic modulus and Poisson ratio calculated?
14. Explain 3 factors that affect the stress-strain curve
15. Give two failure criteria of intact rock and rock mass commonly used
16. Give an example where the discontinuities control the deformability,
strength and permeability of the rock mass.
17. What is the Barton-Bandis criterion for discontinuity strength
18. Give two methods of determining the in situ stress. Explain: natural
or virgin stress, gravitational stress, induced stress, residual stress,
tectonic stress and thermal stress.
19. Explain the Hoek-Brown failure criterion for rock mass.
20. A series of point load tests on pieces of NQ core 48 mm in diameter
gave an average point load breaking strength (P) of 17.76 kN when
the core was loaded diametrically. Determine the approximate
average uniaxial compressive strength of the samples.
21. Explain the method of determining the compressive strength of an
intact rock specimen using the point load testing machine.
22. A 48 mm diameter core was subjected to the axial test in a point
load test machine. Thickness of the test specimen between the
platens of the test machine was determined to be 38 mm. Determine
Is(50) for the rock if the maximum load recorded was 18 kN.
What strength classification would you assign the rock to?

23. What do you understand by rock mass properties?


24. Why is it that testing of intact rock to determine the strength has
been concentrated on rock cylinders?
25. Explain how you would determine the strength of intact rock to apply
in the Hoek-Brown failure equation.
26. What is “principal stress”? What is the role of principal stress?
27. You are provided with cylindrical intact rock specimens of a
metamorphic rock for the determination of the strength of the rock.
Enumerate eight factors that in your opinion would affect the
strength value that you determined.
28. a) The length of core from an underground exploratory drilling is
given in Table 1.

Borehole run Length of core recovered (cm)


(m)

0.0-1.0 12, 2, 13, 24, 05, 10, 09

1.0-2.0 24, 15, 06, 15, 9.75, 9.85, 10

2.0-3.0 20, 15, 25, 5, 15, 6, 9, 2

3.0-5.0 28, 24, 28, 12, 15, 18, 12, 15, 4, 5, 6, 7.8, 9,
12

5.0-6.0 15, 14, 12, 13, 5, 8, 7, 2, 8, 9

6.0-7.0 5, 4, 15, 12, 13, 7

7.0-10.0 15, 14, 16, 17, 2, 3, 5, 6, 4, 8, 7, 9, 12, 15,


14, 17, 18

i. Determine RQD for each run


ii. What is the RQD of the borehole?

b) What is the significance of RQD?


c) State the problems that are associated with the use of RQD
29. Consider two rock fractures, one freshly broken with rough
unweathered surfaces and the other highly weathered to form a clay
gouge. How will cohesion and friction angle differ between the two?
30. Give reasons why in Civil Engineering project design, the Factors of
Safety used differ from those used in Mining Engineering
31. Briefly describe how you will determine the uniaxial compressive
strength of a piece of rock that you sampled from the field in the
laboratory.

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