ABSTRACT
Ö. Aydan1, T. Ito2 & F. Rassouli3 1Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Okinawa, Japan 2Department of Civil Engineering, National College of Technology, Toyota, Aichi, Japan 3Department of Earth Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, USA
Abstract: Creep characteristics of rocks are very important for assessing the long-term stability of rock engineering structures. Creep tests have been carried out on soft rocks, medium hard rocks and hard rocks. These experiments are mostly carried out under compressive loading conditions. There are few studies on rocks for creep tests under a tensile loading regime and direct shear loading regime. Furthermore, the in-situ creep tests are rarely carried out. This chapter describes the state of art on creep tests under laboratory and in-situ conditions. In addition, the impression creep test is described as an index creep tests and its possible use for the evaluation of creep properties of rocks is discussed. Constitutive models are briefly described and their applications to actual experimental results are given.
