First Southern Hemisphere International Rock Mechanics Symposium (SHIRMS) to be held in Perth, Western Australia,16-19 Sept. 08

Fundamental Rock Mechanics plays an important role in addressing the issues of structural stability and the environmental effects of mining, petroleum, waste storage and geothermal projects. It provides understanding of deformation and failure phenomena in rock masses and is crucial in their control. In spite of half a century of intensive development resulting in elaborated experimental and modelling techniques there are still many challenges. A major one is the understanding of fracture initiation, fracture development, the occurrence of catastrophic failures and structural collapse and their deformation and microseismic monitoring. The scale range spanning several orders of magnitude, the variability of rock properties and numerous failure mechanisms contribute to the complexity of these phenomena. Size and scale effects complicate transferring the results of laboratory testing and small scale field measurements to the scale of excavations. In-situ stress measurements and reconstruction, in particular the interpretation of usually small-scale measurements (e.g. overcoring) at the excavation scale and the modelling of the effect of rock anisotropy present another challenge. Alongside failure prevention the Fundamental Rock Mechanics underpins the development of novel and optimisation of existing rock breaking and comminution techniques.

While development of new experimental techniques and equipment is one of the directions in addressing these challenges, numerical simulation is now the method of choice. Accurate modelling of interaction between the openings, faults and other features is paramount to both ensure the safety of the structures and minimising the environmental impact. Notwithstanding the spectacular achievements of modern simulation techniques, there are still outstanding problems such as the multiscale nature of the processes in rock mass, variability of rock properties and multi-parametric nature of the models. Considerable challenge is posed by the mesh dependence in computer simulations of failure and strain localisation. Addressing these issues may require the development of new computational technics and, possibly, a new computational philosophy.

The symposium will provide a forum for exchanging ideas and reporting recent developments in these and adjacent areas of Rock Mechanics.