A development of the discontinuous deformation analysis for rock fall analysis

Discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA), a discrete numerical analysis method, is used to simulate the behaviour of falling rock by applying a linear displacement function in the computations. However, when a block rotates, this linear function causes a change in block size called the free expansion phenomenon. In addition, this free expansion results in contact identification problems when the rotating blocks are close to each other. To solve this problem of misjudgment and to obtain a more precise simulation of the falling rock, a new method called Post-Contact Adjustment Method has been developed and applied to the program. The basic procedure of this new method can be divided into three stages: using the linear displacement function to generate the global matrix, introducing the non-linear displacement function to the contact identification, and applying it to update the co-ordinates of block vertices. This new method can be easily applied to the original DDA program, demonstrating better contact identification and size conservation results for falling rock problems than the original program. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.