An empirical statistical constitutive relationship for rock joint shearing considering scale effect

The scale effect of rock joint shearing is of great significance in rock engineering. Most existing shear constitutive models could describe the pre- and post-peak deformation of rock joints, but only in one particular scale, that is, those existing models will fail to depict the rock joint shearing in different length scales. Therefore, this study aims to establish a constitutive relationship for rock joints with considering the scale effect. Based on the assumption of a random statistical distribution of rock material strength and statistical mesoscopic damage theory, damage variables are defined as the ratio of the number of damaged elements to the total number in the shear process. Together with the nonlinear relationship between the microelement failure and the joint scale, an empirical statistical constitutive relationship for joint is established. And then, the determination method of constitutive relationship parameters and the variation laws with the scale are discussed. Results show that the predicted results of the proposed empirical relationship not only agree well with the experimental results but also fully describe nonlinear deformation, pre-peak softening, post-peak softening, residual stage, and other mechanical properties of the shear deformation of joint with different dimensions, thereby demonstrating the rationality of the constitutive relationship. The physical meaning of the constitutive relationship parameters is clear, and the expressions of the constitutive relationship parameters can be deduced from the experimental results. In addition, the influence of scale effect on the shear deformation of rock joints can be quantified using parameters, which help accurately describe the action form of scale effect.