Testing and Constitutive Modelling of Swelling Rocks in the Elasto-Plastic Range

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Swelling rocks are relatively soft rocks that swell when given access to water. The resulting movements cause problems in tunnels and open excavations, in slope stability problems, and with shallow foundations for buildings. The techniques that have been used to estimate movements have been found to be quite inaccurate and, as a result, designs are usually empirical, with numerous resulting problems. This proposal involves a preliminary effort to develop experimental techniques to be used in developing general three-dimensional constitutive models to describe the swelling behavior of these rocks. Subsequent research will involve application of the apparatus with actual swelling rocks and, hopefully, full scale field case histories.