Introduction of scaling techniques in brittle fracture of rocks

Abstract

We use renormalization group approach to model the fracture behaviour of rocks. Unlike our previous model which was one dimensional, we consider an anisotropic model with normal and tangential probabilities of fractures, and interactions between them. Under simplified assumptions, we are able to model the transition between creep and macroscopic failure, the ‘catastrophic’ brittle failure, with different orientations of fracture depending on the degree of confinement. All these results are a consequence of anisotropic stress.