ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: The aim of this work was to develop an algorithm to enable the consideration of joint roughness in numerical calculations using discontinuum methods. Joint roughness profiles obtained from field measurements were converted to simplified yet realistic line segments which can be used as input for numerical modeling. In this research, the joint macroscale roughness, according to Barton’s roughness profile (JRC), was implemented into the DDA method. In this study, a new code, JProfiler, was developed to carry out this task. Important features of the developed code, JProfiler, are: the capability to import arbitrary images as joint roughness profile of varying scales, point data manipulation, and data visualization. Accordingly, the modified DDA code was applied to the analysis of typical blocky rock mass systems. The analysis results show that the consideration of joint roughness is very important and significantly affects the behavior of the blocky rock mass media.
