ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is devoted to the mechanism and influencing factors of failure phenomena in rock engineering structures. It describes the rock and types of discontinuities encountered in natural rock. The book is concerned with the present design philosophy of support and reinforcement for rock engineering structures. It discusses a brief description of available design approaches, such as empirical, analytical, and numerical methods. The book describes experimental studies undertaken on the mechanical behavior of the rockbolt system. It also describes the experimental study undertaken for the anchorage performance of rockbolts in push-out and pull-out tests and subsequent shear tests on the mechanical behavior of interfaces within the system and grouting material. The book reports the characteristics of various support elements, such as shotcrete, concrete liner, and steel ribs/sets. It gives the constitutive laws of each support member and various experimental studies on their characteristics.
