The objective of this research is to develop a computational method for assessing the safety of underground facilities in jointed rock under various types of catastrophic loads. The model will be based on three dimensional deformable blocks in which the rock is represented by deformable elements and the joints are represented by interfaces. Models for dilatory joint behavior and asperity degradation during cyclic deformation will be included in the model. The models will be integrated in time by explicit integration. The computer program will be implemented on massively parallel computers so that realistic three dimensional models can be solved in a reasonable amount of computation time.
