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Experimental Study on Mechanical Properties, Acoustic Emission Energies and Failure Modes of Pre-cracked Rock Materials under Uniaxial Compression

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Abstract

To better understand the basic properties and phenomena of compression failure in rock mass structures, a series of uniaxial compression tests on sandstone specimens was carried out using loading equipment, an acoustic emission system, a computed tomography scanning system and a high-speed video camera. The results showed that the fracture process of sandstone samples was divided into three stages: original micro-crack closure, micro-crack nucleation and macro-crack propagation. Avalanche energies of the intact and single-fissured specimens followed a power-law distribution, which revealed avalanche criticality. The optimal exponents (\(r\)) of single-fissured specimens were about 1.64 and were slightly lower than that of the intact specimen. The fitted power-law exponents (\(r^{\prime}\)) of sandstone specimens change in the different stages of experiments and gradually tend to a stable value, which acted as a “warning signal” for the impending major collapse. Based on histogram analysis and the maximum likelihood method, the presence of a flaw may affect the statistical properties of avalanche energies. The flaw inclination angle had little influence on the optimal exponent, but it had certain influence on the fracture modes of the specimens. This paper may provide a new theoretical basis for predicting the collapse failure of engineering rock mass structures.

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Acknowledgements

This study is funded by the National Science and Technology Major Project of China (2016ZX05045-004) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (no. 2018CDYJSY0055).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, China

    Shujian Li, Dongming Zhang, Xin Bai, Yapei Chu & Kunyong Guo

  2. College of Resources and Environmental Science, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, China

    Shujian Li, Dongming Zhang, Xin Bai, Yapei Chu & Kunyong Guo

  3. School of Civil Engineering, Shijiazhuang TieDao University, Shijiazhuang, 050043, China

    Xianmeng Zhang

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  1. Shujian Li
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  2. Dongming Zhang
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Correspondence to Dongming Zhang.

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Li, S., Zhang, D., Bai, X. et al. Experimental Study on Mechanical Properties, Acoustic Emission Energies and Failure Modes of Pre-cracked Rock Materials under Uniaxial Compression. Pure Appl. Geophys. 176, 4519–4532 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-019-02201-8

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