Analysis of Mechanical and Hydraulic Properties of Cracked Structure by the Ratio of Crack Opening Dependency (RCOD)

Abstract The Ratio of Crack Opening Dependency (RCOD) was proposed as a new index to simultaneously evaluate the mechanical and hydraulic properties of cracked structure which contains many open cracks within. The RCOD is an index which is defined as the ratio of total amount of crack opening and the total deformation of cracked structure. The efficiency of RCOD as an index to evaluate the coupled problem was numerically analyzed by applying SCDDM (stress compensation-displacement discontinuity method) to the two dimensional multi crack model. It was shown that RCOD is an useful index which can directly evaluate the deformability and the permeability of the cracked structure without any parameters such as stresses or crack size. The possibility of application of RCOD to the field measurements was also discussed.