Engineering Rock Mechanics

10 Introduction

Cook6. Professor Jaeger was a mathematician and engineer, working
in Australia; Professor Cook was a seismologist and mining engineer,
working in South Africa and later in the USA. The first edition of the
textbook was published in 1969. This book has a strong emphasis on
the theory of elasticity applied to rock masses, resulting from Professor
Jaeger’s expertise and the utility of the theory when applied to Professor
Cook’s working environment deep in the South African gold mines. In
these gold mines, high rock stresses close the pre-existing fractures; thus,
the rock mass can be modelled as a continuum and elastic calculations
for stresses, displacements and energies are often good approximations.
’Fundamentals of Rock Mechanics’ had a significant influence on the
development of rock mechanics. For example, in China it was the only
foreign book available on rock mechanics for many years. We will high-
light in later chapters that elasticity theory is one of the major tools
available to support rock engineering design. However, for near-surface
rock engineering, where there are more fractures, often subjected to rel-
atively low rock stress levels, we use additional techniques to study the
rock mass behaviour.

For research work, there are two main journals in the engineering

rock mechanics subject area.

(i) ’International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences’

edited by J. A. Hudson and published by Pergamon Press, Elsevier

Science. This Journal was started in 1964 and concentrates on original

research, new developments and case studies in rock mechanics and

rock engineering for mining and civil applications. Suggested Methods

generated by the ISRM Commission on Testing Methods are published

in the Journal; for example there are several new ones in Volume 36

for 1999. Also, the Journal publishes Special Issues on important topics

(e.g. the one described in Footnote 6) and has published the proceedings

of conferences in compact disk form. The web site of the Journal is

http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/ijrmms.

(ii) ’Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering’ edited by K. Kovari and

H. H. Einstein and published by Springer-Verlag. This Journal was star-

ted in 1968 and concentrates on experimental and theoretical aspects

of rock mechanics, including laboratory and field testing, methods of

computation and field observation of structural behaviour, with ap-

plications in tunnelling, rock slopes, large dam foundations, mining,

engineering and engineering geology. The web site of the Journal is

http:/ /link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00603/about.htm.

We encourage you to consider rock mechanics as a unique discipline.

Of course, there are many common factors with other subjects: Newton’s

6Jaeger J. C. and Cook N. G. W. (1979, 3rd edn.) Fundamentals of Rock Mechanics.

Chapman and Hall, London, 593pp. In 1998, a commemorative conference was held at

the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, USA, to honour

Neville Cook‘s contributions to rock mechanics. The Neville Cook Special Issue of the

International Joumal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences was published in 2000.

This Special Issue contains reminiscing contributions and 30 papers presented at the

conference on subjects pioneered by him.