the science of the mechanical states of the earth’s crust and the processes developing in it as a result of various natural physical effects. The most important physical effects are thermal (cooling, heating) and mechanical (attraction of the masses of the earth and other celestial bodies, centrifugal forces generated by the earth’s rotation).

The purpose of geomechanics is to explain past processes and forecast the development of forthcoming ones involving changes in the stress and deformational state of various sections of the earth’s crust: its solid, liquid, and gaseous phases. The principal task of geomechanics is to establish objective regularities in the formation of the mechanical properties of rocks and in the processes of the redistribution of stresses, deformation, movement, destruction, and stabilization of sections of the earth’s crust. Geomechanics was conceived as a branch of geophysics at the turn of the 20th century on the boundary between geology and mechanics and is especially closely associated with engineering geology, the mechanics of continuous media, hydromechanics, gas mechanics, and thermodynamics. The methods of these sciences are widely used in geomechanical research.