Experimental investigation on the spatio-temporal-energy evolution pattern of limestone fracture using acoustic emission monitoring

Abstract

The spatio-temporal-energy evolution characteristics of strong acoustic emission (AE) events on the crack surface were investigated during the process of a complete limestone rupture, in order to demonstrate the generation, expansion, and interpenetration of microcracks in rock samples. The results show that the process of internal deformation and rock fracture could be well represented using the spatial distribution of strong AE events. The spatial distribution of strong AE events was consistent with the fracture surface, with a good linear relationship between spatial fractal dimension and stress. The formation of the fracture surface occurred mainly in stable and rapid development stages. It shows that the evolution model of strong AE events cumulative energy on the fracture surface matched with the distribution of the Gaussian Amp function. The proposed cumulative energy formula for AE events can quantitatively describe the process of rock crack development, which could be used to describe the spatio-temporal-energy evolution pattern of AE for rock fracture.