Non-break modeling and numerical simulation for non-intact rock failure process

Abstract

Simulation of the failure process of non-intact rock containing initial cracks, voids, and other discontinuities is a research hotspot in rock mechanics and geotechnical engineering. The damage smear method has attracted wide attention due to its ability to realistically depict the complete failure processes of rock from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale. However, when portraying pre-existed discontinuities, the damage smear method suffers from major difficulties such as mesh dependency and stress singularity. To overcome the limitations of current methodology, this paper proposes a novel non-break modeling strategy inspired by the extended finite element method for dealing with embedded discontinuities, in which the discontinuity of the physical fields across crack faces or the void boundary, as well as the stress singularity at the crack tip, can be characterized by introducing appropriate enrichment functions, and the penalty method is used to impose frictional contact constraints. Applications of the combined method of the improved modeling strategy and damage smear analysis to laboratory-scale and engineering-scale numerical examples show a satisfactory approximation with the analytical solution or experimental observations, indicating that the current modeling strategy can further improve computational accuracy while retaining the advantages of the damage smear method.