Numerical method for the determination of contact areas of a rock joint under normal and shear loads

A numerical method to determine the contact areas of a rock joint under normal and shear loads is proposed. The method requires only three-dimensional surface coordinates at the initial stage before shearing, while some disparate materials are inserted between the joint surfaces or particular equipments are adopted for measurement of the contact areas during the test in other conventional methods. The joint surface is modeled as a group of...