ABSTRACT
The statistical description of joint roughness is a systematic approach of characterizing the geometric features for rock joints. This can be accomplished by measuring joint roughness and it avoids ambiguity in characterizing joint roughness. Gaussian isotropic and anisotropic surfaces are numerically generated by applying the random process theory to simulate rock joint surfaces in this work. These generated surfaces are described by the autocorrelation functions which are dependent on two characteristic parameters - the correlation length and the correlation wavelength. The relations among these two characteristic parameters and some statistical descriptive parameters are investigated. The results indirectly indicate that these two characteristic parameters are related to the mechanical behavior of a surface. In addition, the anisotropy ratio of a surface also influences the mechanical behavior of the surface. Since these parameters are simple and easy to obtain, using these parameters to describe the mechanical behavior of rock joints shows significant promise.
