ROCK FRACTURE MECHANICS.

Catalog description

Principles and tools of fracture mechanics are applied to the origins and physical behaviors of faults, dikes, joints, veins, and other natural structures in rock. Special emphasis will be given to combining field observations of fractures in rock with the elastic theory of cracks in order to explore the role of natural fractures in brittle rock deformation in the earth's crust with applications to crustal deformation, structural geology, engineering geology, and induced hydraulic fracture, i.e. Fracking. Prerequisite: GEOL 3443 and MATH 2425 ; or GEOL 3340 and CE 2313 .