ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the performed laboratory tests, including Brazilian, uniaxial compression, ultrasonic, triaxial, uniaxial joint compression and small-scale direct shear tests. The information on borehole distributions shows that the rock specimens were taken from a relatively large area. Three major rock types including dacite, limestone and mudstone were tested. Detailed procedures of rock specimen preparation and of experiments are described, where the American Society for Testing and Material (ASTM) standards were followed. For each test, the failure modes of the samples were checked to rule out invalid test results. Test results showed that the dacite rock is the weakest, having the lowest tensile and shear strengths, Young’s modulus and joint friction angle but higher joint stiffnesses; whereas the variability in the results of this rock seemed to be the most significant. The ML and LM rocks mainly contain mudstone and limestone so that their results are more or less similar. Moderate variations can be observed in test results for all the rocks. It could be probably due to the different pre-existing heterogeneity and different grain compositions of the rock samples since they were collected from various places. In addition, some operating variabilities are unavoidable during the tests.
