On Stress Distribution in Layered Rock Masses

Abstract

Spatial distribution of principal stresses in a layered elastic medium is considered in the paper. Transformations of the principal stresses across an interface between the layers are analyzed. A method for reconstructing the spatial stress distributions in layered medium from several spot measurements is proposed. The introduced approach is capable of obtaining the stable solution of the stress reconstruction problem with respect to the noise in input data. A typical layered medium is considered for which the stresses are reconstructed from few independent spot measurements of the stress state. The proposed approach may be used for solving an inverse problem of tectonic stresses reconstruction from the borehole logging data.