Preface
This book can be used as a 'standalone' textbook or as a comple-
ment to our first book, Engineering Ruck Mechanics: An infroductiun to the
Principles. It contains illustrative worked examples of engineering rock
mechanics in action as the subject applies to civil, mining, petroleum
and environmental engineering. The book covers the necessary under-
standing and the key techniques supporting the rock engineering design
of structural foundations, dams, rock slopes, wellbores, tunnels, caverns,
hydroelectric schemes, mines.
In our first book, we presented the basic principles of engineering rock
mechanics with strong emphasis on understanding the fundamental con-
cepts. Because it is also important to consider the principles in action,
to have practice in applying them, and to be able to link the principles
with specific engineering problems, we prepared this second book con-
taining the illustrative worked examples. We have adopted a question
and worked answer presentation: the question and answer sets have been
collated into twenty chapters which match the subject matter of our first
book - Chapters 1-13 on rock mechanics principles and Chapters 14-
on applications in rock engineering. Part A of this book can be read as a
narrative consisting of sequences of text, questions and answers, or in Part
B the same questions can be tackled without the answers being visible.
Chapters 1-20 have the same format:
Section 1. Introductory aide-memoire to the chapter subject.
Section 2. Questions with worked answers that illustrate the principles
of the rock mechanics subject and the associated rock engin-
eering design issues.
Section 3. Additional points, often reinforcing the most important as-
pects of the subject.
Not only will the question and answer sets enhance understand-
ing of the rock mechanics principles, but they will also provide the
reader with fluency in dealing with the concepts explained in our first
book. Moreover, the question sets give examples of the procedures often
encountered in practice. In this way, confidence in tackling practical
problems will be developed, together with an improved creative abil-