Advances in Two-Dimensional Discontinuous Deformation Analysis for Rock-Mass Dynamics

This paper contains a summary of the developments and applications of the two-dimensional discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA2D) method regarding the modeling of rock-mass dynamics problems. Reviews on the control parameter value selections in DDA2D calculations and the developments and applications of the DDA2D regarding the analysis of rock slope failures, landslides, rockfall, some earthquake-related problems, and so forth, are performed. Research on the DDA2D for three basic rock-mass dynamics problems, such as block dynamic sliding, stress wave propagation, and dynamic fracturing, are specially stated. The modeling of rock blasting, a typical exact rock dynamics problem, is selected as a representative application example of the DDA method to be presented. Generally, the DDA2D has shown to be a powerful numerical method for the modeling of rock-mass dynamics. However, one should pay enough attention to the value selections of those important user-supplied control parameters, as well as to other important factors, such as block size and boundary conditions, for rock dynamics simulations, which have been specially addressed in the paper.