| Abstract: | When a socketed pier embedded in a rock mass is pushed down, the concrete asperities slide over the matching rock asperities. Consequently, the normal stress across the rock–concrete interface increases due to the dilation of the rough contact. The objective of this paper is to model the behaviour of such rough interfaces analytically. A plasticity‐based interface model is developed and implemented in a finite element program. Various features of the model such as failure criterion, plastic potential, bond degradation and dilatancy are presented. Interface parameters obtained from laboratory tests are used to simulate the interaction between concrete and rock numerically. A comparison between laboratory observations and numerical predictions is presented. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
