high degrees the qualities desirable in substances out of which joints are to be made. The joint ends of metal pieces can easily be fashioned to any advantageous form and size without waste of material. Also these metals offer peculiar facilities for the cutting of their surfaces at a comparatively small cost so smoothly and evenly as to ensure the close contact over their whole areas of surfaces placed against each other. This is of the highest importance, especially in joints designed to transmit force. Wrought iron and mild steel are above all other metals suitable for tension joints where there is not continuous rapid motion. Where such motion occurs, a layer, or, as it is technically termed, a “bush,” of brass is inserted underneath the iron. The joint then possesses the high strength of a wrought-iron one and at the same time the good frictional qualities of a brass surface. Leakage past moving metal joints can be prevented by cutting the surfaces very accurately to fit each other. Steam-engine slide-valves and their seats, and piston “packing-rings” and the cylinders they work to and fro in, may be cited as examples. A subsidiary compressible “packing” is in other situations employed, an instance of which may be seen in the “stuffing boxes” which prevent the escape of steam from steam-engine cylinders through the piston-rod hole in the cylinder cover. Fixed metal joints are made fluid tight—(a) by caulking a riveted joint, i.e. by hammering in the edge of the metal with a square-edged chisel (the tighter the joint requires to be against leakage the closer must be the spacing of the rivets—compare the rivet-spacing in bridge, ship and boiler-plate joints); (b) by the insertion between the surfaces of a layer of one or other of various kinds of cement, the layer being thick or thin according to circumstances; (c) by the insertion of a layer of soft solid substance called “packing” or “insertion.”
Apart from cemented and glued joints, most joints are formed by cutting one or more holes in the ends of the pieces to be joined, and inserting in these holes a corresponding number of pins. The word “pin” is technically restricted to mean a cylindrical pin in a movable joint. The word “bolt” is used when the cylindrical pin is screwed up tight with a nut so as to be immovable. When the pin is not screwed, but is fastened by being beaten down on either end, it is called a “rivet.” The pin is sometimes rectangular in section, and tapered or parallel lengthwise. “Gibs” and “cottars” are examples of the latter. It is very rarely the case that fixed joints have their pins subject to simple compression in the direction of their length, though they are frequently subject to simple tension in that direction. A good example is the joint between a steam cylinder and its cover, where the bolts have to resist the whole thrust of the steam, and at the same time to keep the joint steam-tight.
JOINTS, in geology. All rocks are traversed more or less
completely by vertical or highly inclined divisional planes termed
joints. Soft rocks, indeed, such as loose sand and uncompacted
clay, do not show these planes; but even a soft loam after standing
for some time, consolidated by its own weight, will usually
be found to have acquired them. Joints vary in sharpness of
definition, in the regularity of their perpendicular or horizontal
course, in their lateral persistence, in number and in the directions
of their intersections. As a rule, they are most sharply
defined in proportion to the fineness of grain of the rock. They
are often quite invisible, being merely planes of potential weakness,
until revealed by the slow disintegrating effects of the
weather, which induces fracture along their planes in preference
to other directions in the rock; it is along the same planes that
a rock breaks most readily under the blow of a hammer. In
coarse-textured rocks, on the other hand, joints are apt to show
themselves as irregular rents along which the rock has been
shattered, so that they present an uneven sinuous course, branching
off in different directions. In many rocks they descend
vertically at not very unequal distances, so that the spaces
between them are marked off into so many wall-like masses.
But this symmetry often gives place to a more or less tortuous
course with lateral joints in various apparently random directions,
more especially where in stratified rocks the beds have
diverse lithological characters. A single joint may be traced
sometimes for many yards or even for several miles, more particularly
when the rock is fine-grained and fairly rigid, as in limestone.
Where the texture is coarse and unequal, the joints,
though abundant, run into each other in such a way that no one
in particular can be identified for so great a distance. The
number of joints in a mass of rock varies within wide limits.
Among rocks which have undergone little disturbance the joints
may be separated from each other by intervals of several yards.
In other cases where the terrestrial movement appears to have
been considerable, the rocks are so jointed as to have acquired
therefrom a fissile character that has almost obliterated their
tendency to split along the lines of bedding.
The Cause of Jointing in Rocks.—The continual state of movement in the crust of the earth is the primary cause of the majority of joints. It is to the outermost layers of the lithosphere that joints are confined; in what van Hise has described as the “zone of fracture,” which he estimates may extend to a depth of 12,000 metres in the case of rigid rocks. Below the zone of fracture, joints cannot be formed, for there the rocks tend to flow rather than break. The rocky crust, as it slowly accommodates itself to the shrinking interior of the earth, is subjected unceasingly to stresses which induce jointing by tension, compression and torsion. Thus joints are produced during the slow cyclical movements of elevation and depression as well as by the more vigorous movements of earthquakes. Tension-joints are the most widely spread; they are naturally most numerous over areas of upheaval. Compression-joints are generally associated with the more intense movements which have involved shearing, minor-faulting and slaty cleavage. A minor cause of tension-jointing is shrinkage, due either to cooling or to desiccation. The most striking type of jointing is that produced by the cooling of igneous rocks, whereby a regularly columnar structure is developed, often called basaltic structure, such as is found at the Giant’s Causeway. This structure is described in connexion with modern volcanic rocks, but it is met with in igneous rocks of all ages. It is as well displayed among the felsites of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, and the basalts of Carboniferous Limestone age as among the Tertiary lavas of Auvergne and Vivarais. This type of jointing may cause the rock to split up into roughly hexagonal prisms no thicker than a lead pencil; on the other hand, in many dolerites and diorites the prisms are much coarser, having a diameter of 3 ft. or more, and they are more irregular in form; they may be so long as to extend up the face of a cliff for 300 or 400 ft. A columnar jointing has often been superinduced upon stratified rocks by contact with intrusive igneous masses. Sandstones, shales and coal may be observed in this condition. The columns diverge perpendicularly from the surface of the injected altering substance, so that when the latter is vertical, the columns are horizontal; or when it undulates the columns follow its curvatures. Beautiful examples of this character occur among the coal-seams of Ayrshire. Occasionally a prismatic form of jointing may be observed in unaltered strata; in this case it is usually among those which have been chemically formed, as in gypsum, where, as noticed by Jukes in the Paris Basin, some beds are divided from top to bottom by vertical hexagonal prisms. Desiccation, as shown by the cracks formed in mud when it dries, has probably been instrumental in causing jointing in a limited number of cases among stratified rocks.
Movement along Joint Planes.—In some conglomerates the joints may be seen traversing the enclosed pebbles as well as the surrounding matrix; large blocks of hard quartz are cut through by them as sharply as if they had been sliced by a lapidary’s machine. A similar phenomenon may be observed in flints as they lie embedded in the chalk, and the same joints may be traced continuously through many yards of rock. Such facts show that the agency to which the jointing of rocks was due must have operated with considerable force. Further indication of movement is supplied by the rubbed and striated surfaces of some joints. These surfaces, termed slickensides, have evidently been ground against each other.
Influence of Joints on Water-flow and Scenery.—Joints form natural paths for the passage downward and upward of subterranean water and have an important bearing upon water supply. Water obtained directly from highly jointed rock is more liable to become contaminated by surface impurities than that from a more compact rock through which it has had to soak its way; for this reason many limestones are objected to as sources of potable water. On exposed surfaces joints have great influence in determining the rate and type of weathering. They furnish an effective lodgment for surface water, which, frozen by lowering of temperature, expands into ice and wedges off blocks of the rock; and the more numerous the joints the more rapidly does the action proceed. As they serve, in conjunction with bedding, to divide stratified rocks into large quadrangular blocks, their effect on cliffs and other exposed places is seen in the splintered and dislocated aspect so familiar in mountain scenery. Not infrequently, by directing the initial activity of weathering agents, joints have been responsible for the course taken by large streams as well as for the type of scenery on their banks. In limestones, which succumb readily to the solvent action of water, the
