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Influence of faults on the geo-stress field distribution and damage evolution mechanism of fracture zones

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Abstract

As the main battlefield of China’s transportation infrastructure gradually extends westward, more and more superlong deep-buried tunnels are being built in an environment where the neotectonic movements are extremely active. However, the faults formed by tectonic movements have an important disturbing effect on the distribution of geo-stress fields, but these effects have never been studied systematically. Thus, in this paper, based on the Anderson model and the Coulomb friction criterion, the disturbance influence of different factors was analyzed. These factors included the time effect, activity rate, friction coefficient, thickness, and dip angle. Meanwhile, a composite viscoelastic-plastic damage constitutive model was established to determine the evolution of damage in the fracture zone. According to the geo-stress inversion, the effect of faults on the geo-stress distribution was verified. The results showed that all types of faults exhibit geo-stress drop within the fault-affected area, among which the strike-slip fault is the maximum. With the increase of time and the fault activity rate, the geo-stress will increase slowly and continuously. In addition, with the increase of the thickness and dip angle of the fault, the geo-stress inside the fault tends to be flat. When approaching the fault plane, the σ1 orientation of reverse and normal faults is deflected towards the normal direction of the fault plane. Moreover, the σ1 deflection direction of the strike-slip fault is opposite its activity direction. The damage degree and range of the reverse fault are the most significant, and those of the strike-slip fault are the weakest.

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Data availability

All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52008351), the Sichuan Science and Technology Program (No. 2021YJ0539), the project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2020TQ0250), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2682021CX013), and the Sichuan Transportation Science and Technology Program (2021-B-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Transportation Tunnel Engineering, Ministry of Education, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 610031, Sichuan, China

    Ziquan Chen, Zihan Zhou, Chuan He, Changwei Jiang, Bo Wang & Tiansheng Li

  2. China Railway 12th Bureau Group Co., Ltd., Taiyuan, Shanxi 030024, China

    Tiansheng Li

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  1. Ziquan Chen
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  2. Zihan Zhou
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Correspondence to Zihan Zhou.

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Chen, Z., Zhou, Z., He, C. et al. Influence of faults on the geo-stress field distribution and damage evolution mechanism of fracture zones. Bull Eng Geol Environ 82, 173 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-023-03194-4

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