摘要
In rock engineering, the mechanical properties, orientations, and spatial distribution of joints, faults, foliations, etc., often control the deformation and stability of structures such as slopes and tunnels. While analyzing rock masses, discontinuumrelated methods, such as discrete element method （DEM）, discontinuous deformation analysis （DDA）, and numerical manifold method （NMM）, provide greater flexibility in modeling rock mass behavior than the conventional approaches, such as FEM with interface elements.
