What is the RMERC?
The Rock Mechanics & Explosives Research Center (RMERC) at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), founded in 1964, provides research leadership in a broad range of scientific and engineering fields. The Center serves both the mining industry and the wider industrial manufacturing community and provides state-of-the-art facilities for faculty and students involved in mining engineering and geotechnical research.

Center research is practically focused toward problem solutions which involve other engineering disciplines at Missouri S&T. It is thus a campus resource for students and faculty to assist in all areas of the University's mission.

The major goals of the Center include research to solve industrial, national defense, and academic needs; development and support of the graduate program of the University; integration of interdisciplinary faculty efforts for teaching, research and service missions of the University; solution of basic problems in rock mechanics, explosives science, and engineering; and in the application of waterjet technology; and dissemination of research results through publications, conferences, and public symposia.

Work conducted at the Center ranges from fundamental research into the basic mechanical phenomena relating to rock, waterjet and explosives behavior to applied engineering research directed to practical solutions to empirical problems. Much of the Center's research is multi-disciplinary in nature. Within the principle areas of research the following divisions have been established.

Rock Mechanics
The Center has, from its creation, carried an international reputation for its work in dynamic rock mechanics. This has extended into the area of the analysis of static behavior, and, more recently, into work in the fields of plasticity and the analysis of structures in salt and the evaporites. Study areas include:

• deformation of mechanism of rock and minerals
• stability of natural and artificial rock slopes
• stability of underground openings
• mathematical modeling of rock masses
• experimental deformation of rock
• rock fragmentation under impulsive loading High Pressure Water Jets

Faculty in the RMERC were among the first in the U.S. to study the new field of high pressure waterjet cutting. The strength of this effort gradually increased. In 1984 the international stature of the Center program was recognized in the creation of the: HIGH PRESSURE WATERJET LABORATORY within the Center. A new facility for the laboratory has recently been completed and research is in progress over the spectrum of its application from 150 to 5,000,000 psi. Program efforts include:

• rock drilling with high pressure waterjets
• coal and rock excavation by waterjets
• mechanism of failure under waterjet attack
• extinguishment of coal fires with waterjet technology
• formation of wood pulp with waterjets
• deactivation of explosive and ordnance devices by high pressure waterjet washout
• dynamics and vibrations of high pressure waterjets
• waterjet-assisted metal machining
• coal comminution by waterjet
• chemical decontamination by waterjet
• dynamic cavitation erosion research
• abrasive waterjet cutting
• industrial waterjet machining with robotic control
• the remote extraction of underground stored radioactive waste by waterjet cutting and transportation