Week 3: Rock mechanics week

The third week of T&TBM's Master course have been fully dedicated to study the main concepts of Rock Mechanics. Special emphasis on characterisation and modelling of rock masses, taking into account intact rock and discontinuities properties was laid.

Professor Monica Barbero from Politecnico di Torino covered three days of both practical and theoretical lectures with a fantastic didactic approach. After introducing the most important concepts for the characterisation of rock masses she presented some stereonet examples (hand drawn and with DIPS software) for the analysis of the possible kinematisms within the tunnel profile.

Kynematic analysis of an example presented by Prof. Barbero using DIPS software.

Following with the rock mass characterisation process, Dr. Giordano Russo from Geodata Engineering held a formidable lecture on Geomechanical Classification methods. From the first Terzaghi's approach (1946), following with Deere (1964), Bieniawski (1973), Barton (1995), Palmstrom (1995) and Hoek (1995) as the most widespread criteria in time he reached the actual approach applied and developed by Geodata company (GD Classification, Russo et al. 2007) shown below.

Master's students and Dr. Giordano Russo after his lecture on Geomechanical Classifications.

GD Classification for the characterisation of excavation behaviour (Russo et al. 2007)

Concluding this third week we visited the Politecnico di Torino Geotechnics and Rock Mechanics laboratory DIPLAB (DIsaster Planing LABoratory). Dr. Oronzo Pallara as the Technical Director of the laboratory conduced the visit introducing the available testing devices. From Direct Shear Devices, Oedometers, Uniaxial compressive presses, Triaxial apparatuses, to many other specialised devices for research purposes and for the laboratory characterisation of the soil, intact rock and discontinuities are available in this fantastic and modern laboratory.