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materiales rocosos ante la actuación de las fuerzas internas y externas que se ejercen sobre
ellos. Cuando se excava un macizo rocoso o se construyen estructuras sobre las rocas se
modifican las condiciones iniciales del medio rocoso, el cual responde a estos cambios
deformándose y/o rompiéndose. A nivel microscópico, las partículas minerales sufren
desplazamientos y se pueden generar planos de fractura como respuesta al nuevo estado de
tensiones. A nivel de macizo rocoso las deformaciones y roturas se suelen producir a favor de
los planos de discontinuidad.
Con respecto a las discontinuidades, el agua ejerce una presión hidrostática que reduce los
esfuerzos normales entre las paredes de las mismas, reduciendo su resistencia al corte.
Rock quality designation (RQD): time to rest in peace P.J. Pells, Z.T. Bieniawski, S.R. Hencher,
and S.E. Pells
Influence of RQD variability on rock mass index interpretation From the form of Barton’s
equation for Q , it follows that any percentage error in RQD causes an equal percentage error
in the Q-value. RQD is not used directly in RMR, but rather as a rating. Therefore it is not
obvious what error will result from a certain percentage error in RQD.
c) Hoek’s GSI The Geological Strength Index (GSI) was developed by Hoek (1994) to overcome
the deficiencies identified by Hoek and Brown (1988) in the estimation of rock mass properties
in the Hoek-Brown failure criterion. The GSI assigns a range of values to the rock mass from a
chart, which is estimated from visual examination of the rock mass exposed in surface
excavation, accounting for the overall structure and the surface condition of the discontinuities
represented by their roughness and alteration. The advantage of the method is that it can be
easily applied to the Hoek-Brown criterion to estimate input parameters of numerical models,
particularly continuum models. The GSI is used to scale properties from laboratory scale to an
isotropic and homogeneous rock mass scale (Figure 2-8). This assumption needs the rock mass
to contain a sufficient number of randomly oriented discontinuities. Therefore, GSI should not
be applied to rock masses controlled by structure orientation or by instability because of
gravity (Marinos et al., 2007). The GSI is applicable at larger scales as long as the persistence of
the discontinuities is enough to create non-interlocked blocks (Kaiser et al., 2015
The GSI method has been modified over the years to include new cases that were not
considered in the original criterion. Although new versions are available, the subjectivity in the
procedure to estimate its value is considered to be its main disadvantage. In addition, there
are still some rock masses that cannot be classified by the GSI such as veined rock masses
(Brzovic, 2010).