Harrison, J. P. (2008). Géotechnique 58, No. 5, 449–455 [doi: 10.1680/geot.2008.58.5.
449]
Contributions to Géotechnique 1948–2008: Engineering geology, rock
mechanics and rock engineering
J. P. H A R R I S O N *
Throughout its history Géotechnique has regularly pub-
lished papers on the fundamentals of engineering geology,
the core concepts of rock mechanics, and the practice of
rock engineering. In totality these papers provide a con-
cise history of the development of these areas of geotech-
nics. Here, a review of many of these papers is presented
in terms of the specific themes of engineering geology,
rock slope instability, behaviour of intact rock and dis-
continuities in rock, field measurements in rock mech-
anics, discontinuous rock masses, numerical modelling,
and rock engineering. Papers covering a wide range of
issues within these themes are outlined, together with an
indication of how they have influenced later develop-
ments. The review clearly demonstrates how Géotechni-
que has been at the forefront of rock mechanics, rock
engineering and engineering geology for the whole of its
60-year existence.
KEYWORDS: historical review; rock mechanics; rocks
INTRODUCTION
The 1960s saw many journals commence publication on the
subjects of rock mechanics and engineering geology. Exam-
ples include the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology
(Geological Society of London), Felsmechanik und Ingenieur-
geologie (International Society for Rock Mechanics, but
superseding the Springer publication Geologie und Bauwesen,
which ran from 1929 to 1962), Bulletin of Engineering
Geology and the Environment (the then International Associa-
tion of Engineering Geology), Engineering Geology (Else-
vier) and the International Journal of Rock Mechanics and
Mining Sciences (Pergamon Press, latterly Elsevier). These
journals continue publication in one form or another, and
have developed enviable reputations. Perhaps, then, it is no
surprise that Géotechnique is often perceived as a ‘soils’
journal. However, on perusing all 60 volumes of Géotechni-
que it is clear that this perception is incorrect: the journal
contains many tens of contributions dealing with a wide range
of issues in engineering geology and rock mechanics, and a
good number of these are now seen to have been seminal.
This short review brings together a number of these
contributions in a way that aims to show how Géotechnique,
throughout its history, has covered the entire range of
geotechnical engineering in rock, from the fundamentals of
engineering geology, through the core concepts of rock
mechanics, to the practice of rock engineering.
ENGINEERING GEOLOGY
The Europe of 1948 was very different from the Europe
of 2008—in geopolitics as well as in geotechnics. In the
Discussion on this paper closes on 1 December 2008, for further
details see p. ii.
* Imperial College London, UK.
141
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Tout au long de son histoire, Géotechnique a publié, à des
échéances régulières, des communications sur les principes
fondamentaux de la géologie technique, les concepts essen-
tiels de la mécanique des roches et la pratique de l’ingéni-
erie des roches. L’ensemble de ces communications fournit
une histoire abrégée du développement de ces domaines de
la géotechnique. Nous présentons ici un recueil d’un grand
nombre de ces communications sur le plan des thèmes
spécifiques de la géologie de l’ingénieur, de l’instabilité des
pentes rocheuses, du comportement de roches intactes et
discontinuités dans la roche, des mesures sur le terrain en
mécanique des roches, des masses rocheuses discontinues,
de la modélisation numérique, et de la technique des roches.
Nous présentons des communications portant sur tout éven-
tail de questions dans le cadre de ces thèmes, en formulant
une indication sur l’influence qu’elles ont eu sur des dével-
oppements ultérieurs. L’étude démontre clairement la façon
dont Géotechnique s’est maintenue à l’avant-garde dans la
mécanique des roches, l’ingénierie des roches et la géologie
de l’ingénieur tout au long des 60 années de son existence.
immediate aftermath of the Second World War a key
concern was to rebuild the scientific and engineering links
that had been broken by the conflict, and so Volume 1 of
Géotechnique was able to carry a paper that reviewed
engineering geology in Switzerland in the context of the
isolation enforced by the War (Von Moos, 1948). Not only
is engineering geology as we still recognise it laid out in
this contribution, but the paper also underscores just how
much Europe has changed since the 1940s. Although being
cast as a review, the paper is largely a presentation of case
histories, a format that has continued down the years for
papers concerning engineering geology and rock engineer-
ing.
Although issues such as weathering and alteration of rock
are nowadays firmly regarded as being within the realm of
engineering geology, Mayer (1963), in the Third Rankine
lecture, discussed these under the title ‘Recent work in rock
mechanics’. In particular, Mayer described the development
of methods for measuring the ‘alterability of a rock’, and
suggested that not only were there relations between ‘altera-
tion of rock’ and the elastic modulus and compressive and
tensile strengths of rock, but that changes of rock texture—
which could be both chemically and microscopically ob-
served and thereby measured—might be one of the principal
physical properties of rock. Indeed, Mayer made the point
that there was no great benefit to be gained from expensive
in situ tests if no effort was made to understand the micro-
structure of the rock. Engineering geologists are now fully
aware of these concepts, and it is therefore fair to say that
Mayer’s dream of being able to ‘look forward to the day
when a series of standard tests in the laboratory and parallel
tests in situ would make it possible to classify rock for civil
engineering work’ has been realised.
Other important engineering geology case histories within
Géotechnique are those by Terzaghi (1962a), in which the
effects of sheeting joints in granite on the stability and
 142
construction of the foundation of the Mammoth Pool Dam
in California are reported, by Price & Knill (1967) with their
discussion of the rock slope instability found at Edinburgh
Castle Rock, and by Fookes et al. (1977) with their descrip-
tion of the site investigation, engineering geology and rock
slope design at Fowey, Cornwall. While all three of these
contributions are exemplary in the way they combine techni-
ques in order to develop a thorough understanding of the
geomechanics of the sites, that by Terzaghi is particularly
noteworthy for the following concluding comment:
. . . on many projects, the results of the application of rock
and soil mechanics to the solution of the problems of
subsurface engineering will continue to be very disappoint-
ing until it becomes universal practice to maintain intimate
cooperation between the designers of the projects and the
resident engineers during the entire period of construction
. . . If, for geographical reasons, continuous cooperation
between the designers and the construction organization
cannot be maintained, it is essential that at least one of the
resident engineers should be as thoroughly familiar with
the reasoning on which the project was based as the
designers themselves.
Almost half a century after this was written, can we say with
certainty that this tenet is being universally applied, or are we
continuing to encounter difficulties that are largely avoidable?
The principles of engineering geological mapping, to-
gether with recommendations for field practice, were set out
by Fookes (1969) in the context of the work undertaken at
Mangla Dam, Pakistan. This paper introduced a theme that
continues to be developed in engineering geology: it under-
pins Fookes’ 1997 Glossop lecture, in which the importance
of developing a complete geological model was stressed, and
is arguably a precursor to the ‘total engineering geology
approach’ advocated by Baynes et al. (2005). These key
concepts of developing a geological model in order to
understand the geotechnical behaviour of the ground have
featured elsewhere in the journal. For example, Fookes &
Denness (1969) investigated the fissure and fracture patterns
in Cretaceous sediments (both chalk and clay) of South-East
England, in work that has become a key paper on the
geomechanics of natural fractures in weaker sediments, and
continues to be a reference source to researchers. Similarly,
in the 16th Rankine Lecture, Meigh (1976) showed how the
geotechnical properties and behaviour of the Triassic rocks
of the UK could be understood in terms of their various
depositional environments. This contribution was built upon
by Cripps & Taylor (1981) in their important paper on the
engineering properties of mudrocks. A recent elegant con-
tribution carried by Géotechnique on understanding the
geotechnical behaviour of rock in terms of its constituent
minerals and diagenesis is the work of Burton et al. (2001),
who examined strength variation in young reef limestones.
The authors showed clearly how the transformation over
time of the mineral composition of coral from aragonite into
calcite affects the mechanical properties of these materials,
and suggested that classification based on coral species
rather than the more usual age and/or diagenesis may be
most appropriate for engineering purposes.
ROCK SLOPE INSTABILITY
The importance of understanding rock slope instability in
the context of engineering geology features often in the
journal. Terzaghi (1962c) reviewed slope stability in what he
termed ‘hard unweathered rock’, in a paper that has become
highly cited (in for example, Jaeger’s 1971 Rankine lecture
and the 1995 benchmark work by Schmidt & Montgomery).
In a discussion contribution, Bjerrum & Jorstad (1963)
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HARRISON
offered additional case history data from Norway, some of
which valuably linked elevation, time of year, and days of
first and last temperatures above freezing and frost. As we
now attempt a fuller understanding of the effects of global
warming on geotechnics, this work may have gained new
significance.
De Freitas & Watters (1973) presented a detailed review
of toppling instability in rock slopes, together with a number
of field examples, and concluded that this is a common
phenomenon, which can be found at a variety of scales and
in a wide range of rocks. The key nature of this paper in
encapsulating the phenomenon of toppling is indicated by
the fact that this work continues to be cited by researchers
in the field. Hamel & Adams (1974) added valuable field
examples from North America in materials that had not been
affected by the Pleistocene glaciations, and raised the inter-
esting hypothesis that rock creep—and by extension soil
creep—may be a form of toppling instability. Given the
current interest in numerical analysis using distinct element
methods in soil mechanics, this hypothesis may deserve
further testing.
Of the many papers carried by Géotechnique on the
subject of natural slope stability, one is extraordinary: the
1997 paper of Voight & Elsworth that considers the mechan-
isms behind, and the analysis of, instability of volcano
slopes. Such slopes are unique in that the instability derives
from processes within the volcano, and the authors showed
how the intrusion of magma leads to a complex system of
interacting effects such as over-steepened slopes and in-
creased pore pressures due to retrograde boiling and hydro-
thermal systems. This is without doubt an exotic branch of
geotechnics, but one that fits well within the remit of
Géotechnique. The work is an object lesson in tackling a
complex problem from first principles, and although few
geotechnical engineers will have need to reference this work,
its significance for geoscience cannot be understated.
BEHAVIOUR OF INTACT ROCK AND
DISCONTINUITIES IN ROCK
The early years of rock mechanics were, not surprisingly,
concerned with the requirement to understand the behaviour
of rock material, leading to the publication of many papers
on the development of testing techniques and the analysis of
the ensuing results. An early example of such work is a
report on the geotechnical properties of brown coal (Trollope
et al., 1965), which concluded that, in many ways (and
principally because of the effect of moisture content), the
behaviour of this material is similar to that of overconsoli-
dated clay. This similarity suggests a unified framework for
rock and soil behaviour, and some advances have been made
in this direction using critical-state concepts (e.g. Gero-
giannopoulos & Brown, 1978; Novello & Johnston, 1995;
Cuccovillo & Coop, 1999; Cuss et al., 2003). However, it
seems that there is more work to do both in understanding
the behaviour of rock in this context and in developing
wider appreciation of critical-state concepts within the rock
mechanics community. A few years later, the anisotropy of
strength and stiffness of granite was explored through physi-
cal tests and microfabric analysis (Douglass & Voight, 1969)
in a truly benchmark publication, supporting such key papers
in the field of rock mechanics and structural geology as
those by Kranz (1979), Kranz et al. (1979) and Moore &
Lockner (1995).
Perhaps because of its eminence in the area of soil behav-
iour, Géotechnique has attracted a number of contributions
concerning the behaviour of weak rocks. Thus Elliott &
Brown (1985) presented detailed laboratory test results on
the yield and strength of Bath stone, and used an analysis of
 ENGINEERING GEOLOGY, ROCK MECHANICS AND ROCK ENGINEERING
plastic strain vectors at yield to demonstrate that an asso-
ciated plastic flow rule was appropriate for this material.
Importantly, yield stress was found to be independent of
stress path. This work continues to be a significant resource,
including influential work such as that on the effects of
structure in natural soils and weak rocks by Leroueil &
Vaughan (1990). Dobereiner & deFreitas (1986) charac-
terised weak sandstones using mineral composition, packing
density, grain contact area and grain size distribution as a
means of predicting geotechnical properties. These authors
developed an index parameter for assessing the strength and
deformability of these rocks in terms of their saturated
moisture content, thereby demonstrating once more how an
appreciation of concepts from both soil and rock mechanics
is required for these materials.
Work to improve our understanding of brittle fracture
processes in rock continues, and one recent contribution to
this is the concept of the relative mobilisation of cohesive
and frictional components of strength in these materials.
Using case history data of breakouts around circular tunnels
in the Lac du Bonnet granite of Manitoba, Canada, Hajiab-
dolmajid et al. (2003) proposed that these components
mobilise independently within the fractured rock that devel-
ops in these failures. This is a credible, but currently
controversial, concept, and it will be interesting to see how
it develops in coming years.
The mechanical behaviour of discontinuities has also been
thoroughly and authoritatively explored in the pages of
Géotechnique. In one of the earliest reports of direct shear
testing on discontinuities, Krsmanovic (1967) presented re-
sults obtained using 40 cm square specimens of sandstone
and conglomerate. The large size of these specimens (rela-
tive to those routinely used nowadays) and the massive size
of the testing rig means these data are still of fundamental
importance. The vital problem of the shear strength of rock
containing discontinuous joints was studied two years later
by Lajtai (1969) through a series of careful direct shear
tests. The supporting analysis concluded that compressive,
shear and tensile failure mechanisms occur in these condi-
tions, a point that is perhaps not as widely recognised by
geotechnical engineers today as it might be.
Field tests to determine the shear strength of discontinu-
ities are awkward to perform, and as a result the analysis of
the so-called tilt test has received significant attention in the
rock mechanics community. In this vein, Cawsey & Farrar
(1976) described a simple tilt test apparatus and presented
friction angle results for natural discontinuities in the Upper
Chalk. These results suggest that the initial friction angle for
these features is about 378, decreasing to about 348 after a
few repetitions of sliding, but then increasing to about 408
after many sliding repetitions. As a result of visual inspec-
tion of the surfaces the authors concluded that the initial
reduction is due to the surfaces becoming smoother owing
to both damage and infilling with rock flour, with the subse-
quent increase being due to angular fragments of chalk
jamming between the surfaces of the discontinuity. A de-
tailed discussion contribution by Hencher (1976) provided
further results for stronger rocks (Portland limestone, Dela-
bole slate and Darleydale sandstone), and showed that while
the residual friction angle was some 78 lower than the peak,
a shear displacement of more than 1.5 m was required for
this to develop. Unfortunately these valuable contributions
seem to have been ignored by the rock mechanics commun-
ity in its subsequent development of tilt tests. Furthermore,
the principle that friction angle may reduce as the shear
displacement continues to increase up to very large values is
probably—and erroneously—not accounted for in the major-
ity of analyses undertaken by geotechnical engineers.
Recognising that conventional linear direct shear tests
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143
cannot induce shear displacements that are sufficiently large
to enable the residual strength of discontinuities to be devel-
oped, Xu & deFreitas (1988) developed a rotary shear
machine as a means of overcoming this limitation. This was
used to determine the strength of artificial discontinuities in
rock, with a later report (de Toledo & de Freitas, 1993)
dealing with the behaviour of a synthetic discontinuity
infilled with various thicknesses of Gault clay. In this, and a
later discussion contribution by Papaliangas et al. (1995),
the complex mechanical conditions found in filled disconti-
nuities were explored in a preliminary fashion; a conclusion
has not yet been reached on the fundamental mechanisms,
as the recent work by Indraratna et al. (2005) demonstrates.
FIELD MEASUREMENTS IN ROCK MECHANICS
Some of the earliest work reported in Géotechnique on
field measurements in rock mechanics was on geophysical
methods to determine rock mass elastic properties. In parti-
cular, Brown & Robertshaw (1953) used p-wave velocity to
determine the elastic modulus of rock in foundations, and
Evison (1956) used p- and s-wave velocities to determine
both Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. Terzaghi (1962b)
reported in situ stress measurements in Swedish mines, and
presented results that showed how the principal circumferen-
tial stresses determined in a tunnel in ‘sound, granitic gneiss’
demonstrated significant variability of both magnitude and
direction. We now realise that such variability is inherent in
rock, and is the result of the presence of discontinuities and
material heterogeneity and anisotropy. Indeed, the importance
of Terzaghi’s findings was recognised by Amadei (1996) in
his influential work on the importance of anisotropy when
estimating and measuring in situ stresses in rock.
Of all the field measurements undertaken in rock mech-
anics, determination of the in situ stress state is perhaps both
the most common and the most difficult. Experience gained
over many years has confirmed that there are no general
relations that can be applied in advance of a stress determi-
nation campaign at any given location to estimate the
magnitudes of the principal stress components. Prediction of
the principal stress directions (with, perhaps, the exception
that one component may act in a vertical direction) is
equally difficult. Development of an instrument that would
allow determination of the complete stress tensor from a
single installation was thus a crucial requirement from the
outset of modern rock mechanics, and such a device was
described in Géotechnique by Rocha & Silverio (1969). This
elegant yet sophisticated device took the form of a solid
epoxy resin cylinder, in the surface of which were embedded
a number of electrical resistance strain gauge rosettes: in use
it was cemented into a borehole and then overcored while
the gauges were monitored, with the complete stress tensor
being calculated from the strain changes. This instrument
was the first overcoring gauge capable of giving the com-
plete stress tensor from a single installation, but as the
cylinder was solid and of different elastic properties from
the rock in which it was installed it was possible for strains
to be induced during overcoring that were sufficient to
debond the gauges. To overcome this problem the device
was made into a thin-walled cylinder, with this critical
development being reported independently by Rocha et al.
(1974) and Worotnicki & Walton (1976). This arrangement
remains essentially unchanged in the commercially available
hollow inclusion cells available currently.
DISCONTINUOUS ROCK MASSES
Although early work in rock mechanics tended to consider
rock as a continuum, by the mid 1960s the profound effect
 144
of discontinuities on its properties began to be acknowl-
edged. Development of techniques for the measurement and
analysis of discontinuity geometry then came to the fore,
with one of the first such pieces of work being the seminal
paper ‘Sources of error in joint surveys’ by Ruth Terzaghi
(1965). This work commenced with what could now be
regarded as an introduction to the basics of hemispherical
projections, but then moved on to the classical analysis on
orientation bias. Importantly, by introducing the concept of
‘blind zones’ in sampling, the paper concluded by setting
out the fundamental prerequisites for conducting minimally
biased discontinuity surveys on outcrops, in tunnels and on
borehole core. These principles have immense practical
significance, and for these alone the paper is deserving of
every geotechnical engineer’s acquaintance. The significance
of this work in the development of rock mechanics and rock
engineering cannot be underestimated: it is cited by over
100 research papers, including such significant works as
those of Priest & Hudson (1976), the ISRM suggested
method (Barton, 1978) and Einstein & Baecher (1983).
By the 1980s the effect of discontinuities on the mechani-
cal behaviour of rock was becoming much better understood,
and thus Hoek, in the 23rd Rankine Lecture (Hoek, 1983),
was able to elucidate the strength of jointed rock masses.
Although essentially a distillation of work published over the
preceding decade on empirical peak strength criteria, the
shear strength of discontinuities, the strength of rock con-
taining inclined planes of weakness and the strength of
fractured rock masses, the paper is a concise collection of
principles that remain central to the practice of rock engi-
neering. Indeed, the concepts and material first collected
together in this paper have gone on to form the basis of a
number of important papers and books, including the influ-
ential work by Hoek and Brown on practical techniques for
assessing the strength of discontinuous rock masses (Hoek &
Brown, 1997).
The hydraulic properties of discontinuous rock masses had
been under investigation at this time, with one particularly
noteworthy development being that of the crack tensor (Oda,
1985). The crack tensor in this work resulted from integra-
tion over a volume of material of the geometry of circular
discs that represent cracks of uniform aperture, and was used
to obtain the permeability tensor of a fractured mass of
impermeable rock. The mathematical development revealed
that the principal axes of the crack and permeability tensors
were coincident, and a comparison of permeability results
obtained from the crack tensor with those obtained by
numerical analysis both supported this and demonstrated the
utility of the approach. The crack tensor concept continues
to be key to developments in a wide range of problems in
both the strength and hydraulic behaviour of discontinuous
rock masses, and is likely to continue to be so as rock
mechanics research extends our understanding of coupled
hydro-mechanical properties of rock masses for applications
such as nuclear waste isolation.
The deformability and deformation of jointed rock masses
was explored in a reproduction of the Eighth Laurits Bjer-
rum Memorial Lecture (Barton, 1986). This compilation
paper discussed aperture and conductivity of discontinuities,
compaction and depletion in fractured reservoirs, hydraulic
shearing, the modelling of shearing and dilation, in situ
stress distributions, stability of underground openings, and
fluid flow through fractured rock masses. Despite empiricism
being a key part of the work in this paper, it nevertheless
forms the basis of many analytical and design techniques
used to the present day. Arguably, this indicates that there is
a great deal of fundamental research still to be undertaken
on the deformability and deformation of discontinuous rock
masses.
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HARRISON
Although a certain maturity had been reached in the
understanding of the geotechnical behaviour of discontinuous
rock masses by the early 1990s, limit equilibrium analysis of
complex block shapes was hampered by their awkward
geometry. As a means of overcoming this difficulty, the
powerful analytical technique of block theory had been
undergoing steady development for a number of years, and
so it was in 1995 that the 35th Rankine lecture was given by
Goodman, one of its principal developers (Goodman, 1995).
This synthesis paper gave a clear and straightforward intro-
duction to block theory, and through the use of various
examples showed how it could be applied to good effect in
rock engineering. A particular strength of block theory is in
helping to produce hemispherical projection diagrams that
clearly and concisely show how the mechanical behaviour of
a rock mass depends on the orientation of the engineered
structure, and is perhaps the single most important reason
why geotechnical engineers should be familiar with it.
Uniquely for Géotechnique, and probably any geotechnical
journal, the paper included the words and music to Rankine’s
‘The three-foot rule’, together with an additional sixth verse
penned by Goodman that, in support of his conclusions
related to the strength of discontinuous rock masses, ex-
horted engineers to adopt ‘a 3-d rule’! Unfortunately, despite
its obvious utility in analysing complex discontinuous rock
masses, block theory is not as widely used as it should be,
and one can therefore conclude that Goodman’s exhortations
are unfulfilled.
Géotechnique continues to publish influential papers on
rock mass geometry. One of the most recent is that by
Zhang et al. (2002), in which stereological principles were
used to derive a relation between observed trace length and
size distribution of elliptical discontinuities. Additionally, the
authors gave a procedure for determining major axis orienta-
tion, aspect ratio and the probability density function of the
major axis length for elliptical discontinuities from trace
length sampling on different sampling windows. This is a
fundamental piece of work that will become an essential
reference for other workers in this field.
NUMERICAL MODELLING
The development of numerical analysis for rock mech-
anics is well represented in Géotechnique. One of the ear-
liest contributions was by Zienkiewicz et al. (1968), who
made a significant development in non-linear finite element
stress analysis by considering rock as a material with zero
tensile strength. A number of surface and subsurface exam-
ples were presented in the paper that clearly show how stress
redistribution takes place to leave a tension-free zone that is
very different from the zone of tensile stress developed with
an elastic solution. With the current preponderance of con-
tinuum-based numerical analyses in rock engineering, this is
a point that needs to be restated. Effectively, this work
utilised a ‘ubiquitous joint’ material. Such a material is
applicable when the location and development of particular
fractures is not important, but if this is not the case then the
fracture propagation process must be explicitly captured. To
this end, Scavia (1995) introduced a two-dimensional bound-
ary element formulation that used linear elastic fracture
mechanics to model the propagation of discontinuities in
rock, and used it to show how pre-existing cracks in a rock
slope could extend, coalesce and lead to instability. Being
able to simulate progressive breakdown convincingly in this
way is a critical step in understanding the behaviour of rock,
and as a result the approach has found notable success in
modelling both fracture coalescence (Bobet & Einstein,
1998) and the initiation and progressive failure of natural
rock slopes (Eberhardt et al., 2004).
 ENGINEERING GEOLOGY, ROCK MECHANICS AND ROCK ENGINEERING
The end result of intense fracture propagation is a dis-
continuous rock mass, and distinct element methods are
usually used for the analyses of such material. Of particular
interest is the flow of fluid through discontinuous rock
masses, and Harper & Last (1989) showed how a distinct
element code could be used to interpret changes to the
conductivity of a fractured rock mass caused by fluid injec-
tion. This work showed that the response is highly non-
linear, a finding of practical significance for all rock en-
gineering applications in fractured rock that involve injection
or abstraction of fluids. However, our knowledge in this area
is still limited (Jing, 2003).
An extreme case of discontinuous materials is given by
granular media, and as a means of studying these Cundall &
Strack (1979) described the distinct element method for
assemblages of circular discs. This is probably the first
report of such a development, and has gone on to become
the most highly cited paper in Géotechnique.
Not all numerical techniques reported in the journal have
attracted the acclaim they deserve. One such example is that
by Jones & Bellamy (1973), in which a frictionless, lami-
nated, transversely isotropic elemental model for prediction
of mining subsidence was proposed. The authors demon-
strated the efficacy of the approach by reference to two case
histories from UK coal mines, and while the technique
seems to be a great advance on the National Coal Board’s
empirical method, it was probably developed too late to
overcome the widespread use of the latter in the UK. That
said, a great deal of longwall coal extraction still takes place
in various countries of the world, and one wonders whether
geotechnical engineers in these locations would be better
served applying the work of Jones and Bellamy than
attempting to make the NCB method fit their local circum-
stances.
ROCK ENGINEERING
One aim of a deeper understanding of rock mechanics
principles is improved rock engineering, and a number of
papers appearing in Géotechnique tackle this issue. One of
the earliest looked at the matter of stresses induced around
cavities of various shapes (Terzaghi & Richart, 1952), and
although the analyses were limited to those conditions for
which closed-form solutions could be obtained, this work is
immediately recognisable as presenting the fundamentals of
stress analysis around underground openings in a manner
that continues to be used in almost all rock mechanics
textbooks. This pioneering paper dealt with fundamental
issues, and as such has been a source of reference for much
other influential material such as Ward’s 18th Rankine
lecture on tunnel support in weak rock (see below), and the
important work on stresses in anisotropic rocks developed by
Amadei et al. (1987).
Two Rankine lectures from the 1970s deal extensively
with different aspects of rock engineering. First, Jaeger
(1971)—in the 11th Rankine Lecture—produced a particu-
larly broad contribution in a paper that began with the
strength of intact rock and the influence of testing machine
stiffness, moved through testing methods and the strength of
discontinuities, and concluded with the stability of rock
slopes and the strength of fractured rock masses. Much of
the material in this paper now forms the basis of textbooks
on the fundamentals of rock mechanics and rock engineer-
ing, and the work on the frictional behaviour of both intact
rock and rock fractures influenced the significant publication
on rock friction by Byerlee (1978). This work remains a
source of reference to the rock physics community.
The 18th Rankine Lecture (Ward, 1978) dealt with the
support of tunnels in weak rock, through a detailed case
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145
history of the Kielder experimental tunnel in north-east
England. As an adjunct to the Kielder water scheme, this
was a series of short 3.3 m diameter headings driven through
limestone, mudstone and sandstone at a depth of up to
100 m. The paper defined ‘weak’ as ‘needing support’, and
as such it encompassed both weak intact rock and strong
heavily fractured rock. These materials usually involve dif-
ferent failure mechanisms and hence require different analy-
tical techniques. Thus, among many others, this paper is
cited by both Brown et al. (1983) in their classic paper on
ground-support interaction, and Goodman in his 35th Ran-
kine Lecture (see above). This case history is perhaps unique
in that it describes the progressive collapse of a section of
tunnel that was deliberately permitted to fail. Such field
experiments are rare indeed, and geotechnical engineers
should become reacquainted with this paper for this report
alone.
The Kielder experimental tunnel yielded another rock
engineering case history, this one presenting final results
(Ward et al., 1983). This paper included high-quality mon-
itoring data that decisively showed the beneficial effect on
stability of sprayed concrete linings, and of the detrimental
effect of delaying the introduction of support into a tunnel.
Although these concepts are now universally recognised,
given the advances made in both numerical modelling and
rock strength models, and the lack of more recent data, the
monitoring results themselves are probably more useful now
than at the time of publication. A similarly detailed case
history is that by Douglas et al. (1983) regarding the trial
excavation for the machine hall at Dinorwig pumped storage
power station. This involved the careful instrumentation of
the roof of a 24.5 m span cavern in slate containing dolerite
dykes, and a reconciliation of the observed and computed
displacements. The paper (and the geotechnical work behind
it) is exemplary, and should be required reading for all
engineers involved in the design of large-span caverns. The
paper emphasised the importance of extensively instrument-
ing such a structure and then using the results to both ratify
and optimise the support and reinforcement design. It is a
pity that, while we now have tools for numerical analysis
that far surpass those available at the time of the Dinorwig
project, we seldom implement anything like as extensive an
instrumentation scheme as was used there; somehow we
seem to have embarked upon an approach that regards
numerical analysis as self-sufficient, when in fact it must
always be supported by rigorous field observations.
CONCLUSIONS
This review clearly demonstrates that publications in
Géotechnique have been at the forefront of rock mechanics,
rock engineering and engineering geology for the whole of
its 60-year existence. Many of the contributions on these
subjects published in the journal have proved with the
passage of time to be either key contributions in their own
right, or to be the source of fruitful lines of development. It
is apparent that this continues to be the case: many papers
published in Géotechnique in recent years are likely to be
similarly influential, and it will be interesting to watch the
development of the concepts they propose.
However, one unsettling aspect is clear: a number of the
papers highlighted in this review present facts and concepts
that are crucial to high-quality geotechnical engineering, but
these same papers—and hence the crucial facts and concepts
they contain—have become lost to much of the geotechnical
community. Hopefully, through this review engineers will be
able to reacquaint themselves with their valuable contents.
 146 HARRISON
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