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Scaling law of average failure rate and steady-state rate in rocks

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Earthquakes and Multi-hazards Around the Pacific Rim, Vol. I

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Abstract

The evolution properties in the steady stage of a rock specimen are reflective of the damage or weakening growth within and thus are used to determine whether an unstable transition occurs. In this paper, we report the experimental results for rock (granite and marble) specimens tested at room temperature and room humidity under three typical loading modes: quasi-static monotonic loading, brittle creep, and brittle creep relaxation. Deformed rock specimens in current experiments exhibit an apparent steady stage characterized by a nearly constant evolution rate, which dominates the lifetime of the rock specimens. The average failure rate presents a common power–law relationship with the evolution rate in the steady stage, although the exponent is different for different loading modes. The results indicate that a lower ratio of the slope of the secondary stage with respect to the average rate of the entire lifetime implies a more brittle failure.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 11672258), National Basic Research Program of China (Grant 2013CB834100) and Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (Grant D2015203398). We acknowledge useful comments of two anonymous reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China

    Shengwang Hao, Chao Liu, Yingchong Wang & Fuqing Chang

  2. The State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China

    Shengwang Hao

Authors
  1. Shengwang Hao
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  2. Chao Liu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shengwang Hao .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Earthquake Prediction Division, China Earthquake Networks Center Earthquake Prediction Division, Beijing, China

    Yongxian Zhang

  2. University of California, Seismological Laboratory, Earth and Plan University of California, SANTA CRUZ, USA

    Thomas Goebel

  3. Earth and Atmo. Sciences, Georgia Tech Earth and Atmo. Sciences, ATLANTA, Georgia, USA

    Zhigang Peng

  4. Tectonophysics, GNS Science Tectonophysics, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

    Charles A. Williams

  5. DAVIS, USA

    Mark Yoder

  6. Dept of Physics, Univ of California Dept of Physics, Davis, California, USA

    John B. Rundle

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Hao, S., Liu, C., Wang, Y., Chang, F. (2018). Scaling law of average failure rate and steady-state rate in rocks. In: Zhang, Y., Goebel, T., Peng, Z., Williams, C., Yoder, M., Rundle, J. (eds) Earthquakes and Multi-hazards Around the Pacific Rim, Vol. I. Pageoph Topical Volumes. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71565-0_2

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