Influences of true 3D twin flaws on principal stress status and crack occurrence of brittle rock-like samples under uniaxial compression: Insights from experimental and DEM studies

Abstract

Fracture structures commonly have negative impacts on the strength and safety of rock mass, and various combinations of 2D and 3D flaws make the destruction procedure becomes more complicated. Therefore, laboratory tests based on three types of flawed rocks (symmetric twin flaws with different 2D-3D occurrences) are finished to detect the mechanical, optical and acoustic characteristics of fractured rocks during the uniaxial compression test; PFC3D simulations are conducted for analyzing the deformation features, principal stress distributions, and detailed failure mechanism of the fractured rocks. The main results are as follows: 1) Different combinations of 2D & 3D preset flaws directly influence the results of deformation, stress distribution, and failure developments. 2) Rotation of the intermediate stress axes only appear near the flaw inclination boundary (when the monitoring position moves outwards), while the directions of intermediate principal stress axes remain stable near the flaw strike boundary. 3) Separating cracks by various occurrences helps to construct local failures along different directions, and make some local failures visible and clear; the traditional cracks (short line or thin oval shape) are induced by the uneven deformation in x-o-z planes, and the separated cracks (wide oval or standard disc shape) result from the uneven deformation in y-o-z planes. 4) Surrounding rocks at different positions suffer various modes of failures, the non-ignorable thickness of preset flaw leads to simultaneous Mode I and Mode II failure at the flaw tip, and the mixed Mode II&III failure only occurs in the rocks adjacent to the flaw strike boundary.