The study of rock dynamics is important because many rock mechanics and rock engineering problems involve dynamic loading ranging from earthquakes to vibrations and explosions. The subject deals with the distribution and propagation of loads, dynamic responses, and processes of rocks and rate-dependent properties, coupled with the physical environment. Rock dynamics has a wide range of applications in civil, mining, geological and environmental engineering. However, due to the additional "4^th" dimension of time, rock dynamics remains, in the discipline of rock mechanics, a...

Rocks and soils can behave as discontinuous materials, both physically and mechanically, and for such discontinuous nature and behaviour there remain challenges in numerical modelling methods and techniques. Some of the main discontinuum based numerical methods, for example the distinct element method (DEM) and the discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA), are associated with geomechanics and geoengineering. Discontinuous numerical methods have been widely applied in geoengineering related to civil, mining, hydropower and petroleum engineering. There are many good examples of the use of...

Rock Dynamics: From Research to Engineering is a collection of the scientic and technical papers presented at the Second International Conference on Rock Dynamics and Applications (RocDyn-2, Suzhou, China, 18-19 May 2016). The book has four sections. The first section contains 8 keynote papers, covering a wide range of dynamic issues related to rock mechanics and rock engineering, from rock failure mechanism and stress wave propagation to seismic behaviour and impact. Section 2 includes papers on rock dynamic theory and numerical modelling, focussing on theoretical aspects of rock...