ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, we discussed the failure of rock in direct tension. However, it is difficult to conduct direct tensile tests in the laboratory because of the problem of obtaining a true tensile stress field in the rock specimen. The preparation of specially shaped specimens, like the dog-bone specimen in Figure 2.1 in Chapter 2, is time consuming and not suited to field work at a construction site. Thus, methods have been developed for testing rock specimens in tension-but with overall compressive loading, Figure 3.1.
