Abstract
Uniaxial compression tests were carried out on rock specimens which were modeled on a bench cut-quarry or cliffs of various shapes in order to clarify behavior of near-surface crack growth in rock mass. Exfoliations at highly compressed parts and detachments of convex parts as results of crack growth were observed in the experiments. Numerical simulation on crack growth based on 2D-DDM was carried out in order to explain the experimental results. The authors proposed a new criterion for crack growth since predictions by using widely known Sih's maximum tensile stress theory were slightly different from the observed results. The new method takes shear stress as well as tensile stress near crack tip into account and gave results that were similar to the observation. A series of compression tests on rock and mortar specimens having a slit or an initial crack was conducted in order to clarify the applicability of the new method. Profiles of the most observed cracks were similar to predictions by the proposed method.
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