Rock quality designation-fracture intensity index method for geomechanical classification

Rock quality designation (RQD) is a simple and effective way of rock mass classification from surface scanlines or preferably borehole measurements. A major drawback in its classical use is that only one representative RQD value is obtained from the field measurements per core run. However, it is shown in this paper that the field measurements along a scanline provide detailed information about the rock quality and the fracture intensity (FI) for a given number of joints. In order to be able to extract the complete information concealed within the field data, the RQD-fracture index diagram concept is proposed and applied to actual field scanline measurements from England. The basis of the suggested procedure is to obtain a series of all possible RQD and FI values from given intact length measurements. This procedure provides additional information as to the local zones of heterogeneities within the rock mass and a new way of rock classification on the basis of the combined effects of RQD and FI. It is also possible to calculate percentages of different rock qualities within the same rock mass.