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Rock Slope Engineering: Civil and Mining, 4th Edition

¹ MACTEC Engineering and Consulting Inc., 5628 East Slauson Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90040

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"The design of rock cuts involves the collection of geotechnical data, use of appropriate design methods, and implementation of excavation methods and stabilization/protection measures suitable for the particular site conditions." This clear statement of the scope of Rock Slope Engineering, by Wyllie and Mah (2004), is typical of the style of this excellent reference book for professionals or text for students. It is based on the third edition of a book with the same title by Evert Hoek and John Bray (1981) published for the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in London. Readers familiar with the relevant literature will notice similarities and overlap in Rock Slope Engineering with Wyllie's (1999) book Foundations on Rock and his chapters in Landslides: Investigation and Mitigation (Turner and Schuster, 1996).

Rock slope design methods, as this book indicates, are based on the concept of shear forces and shear strength: the shear forces tend to cause displacement along a discrete sliding surface or across a zone of shearing, whereas the shear strength tends to resist displacement. Instability occurs in those cases in which the shear forces exceed the shear strength. Instability could lead to sudden or progressive collapse of a slope, or displacement that might or might not be tolerable, depending on the location of the slope and the surrounding land use. An open-pit mine without some slope movements typically . . . [Full Text of this Article]