The development of block theory in rock engineering

Abstract

Classic block theory, officially established in 1985 with the publishing of the book “Block Theory and Its Application to Rock Engineering” [1], takes a lot of simplifying and restricting assumptions. Such assumptions allowed for a simple method which with acceptable restrictions gave satisfying results for engineering practice. Despite that, there have been many improvements throughout the years which try to accommodate for more complex problems and/or increase the overall reliability of the method. The scope of this paper is to give an overview of said improvements over the classic block theory. Based on the overview of assumptions of the classic theory and on the researches to date, it’s possible to more easily identify areas of further research and improvement.