Phsw. Kulatilake et al., Physical and particle flow modeling of jointed rock block behavior under uniaxial loading, INT J ROCK, 38(5), 2001, pp. 641-657
Citations number
26
Categorie Soggetti
Geological Petroleum & Minig Engineering
Journal title
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ROCK MECHANICS AND MINING SCIENCES
Laboratory experiments and numerical simulations, using Particle Flow Code
(PFC3D), were performed to study the behavior of jointed blocks of model ma
terial under uniaxial loading. The effect of joint geometry parameters on t
he uniaxial compressive strength of jointed blocks was investigated and thi
s paper presents the results of the experiments and numerical simulations.
The fracture tensor component in a given direction is used to quantify the
combined directional effect of joint geometry parameters including joint de
nsity, orientation and size distributions, and the number of joint sets. Th
e variation of the uniaxial compressive strength of the jointed blocks of t
he model material with the fracture tensor component was investigated. Both
the laboratory experiments and the numerical simulations showed that the u
niaxial block strength decreases in a nonlinear manner with increasing valu
es of the fracture tensor component. It was observed that joint geometry co
nfiguration controls the mode of failure of the jointed blocks and three mo
des of failure were identified, namely (a) tensile splitting through the in
tact material, (b) failure by sliding along the joint plane and/or by displ
acement normal to the joint plane and, (c) mixed mode failure involving bot
h the failure mechanisms in (a) and (b). It has also been shown that with c
areful parameter calibration procedures, PFC3D could be used to model the s
trength behavior of jointed blocks of rock. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
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