Papers by Author: Ming Ruo Jiao

Abstract: A series of numerical simulations were performed to investigate the effects of geometric and mechanical heterogeneity of pre-existing faults of rocks on their failure and induced earthquake precursors. The numerical results revealed that rock failures with the different heterogeneity produce the different earthquake precursors, which are in a good agreement with those of observations in nature.

Abstract: Six types of numerical specimens containing two notches are set up to numerically investigate the effect of element size on rock shear strength and failure pattern using RFPA2D (rock failure process analysis) code. These specimens are of the same geometrical dimension 180 mm×180 mm and have been discretized into 61×61, 122×122, 183×183, 244×244, 305×305, and 366×366 elements.The width of notches is about 2.95 (180/61) mm and the length is 45mm. The specimens are placed in a direct shear box. A lateral confining pressure with a value of 0.15MPa is invariably loaded in the vertical direction and an increasing horizontal displacement with 0.002mm/step is applied in the horizontal direction. The whole shear failure progress and associated stress field for the specimens are visually represented. Results show that the crack propagation is mostly influenced by the stress field in the vicinity of the notch tip, the required element size would be necessary in order to obtain good results. In general, for a coarse mesh, the stress field close to the notch tip can’t be represented accurately and shear strength obtained by such discretisation is slightly higher than the accurate value. For a fine mesh, the notch tip spreads through a relatively large number of elements and the stress field in vicinity of notch tip is well represented by the finite element approximation, therefore the failure pattern is consistent with real physical fracture mode.

Abstract: It has long been recognized that the strength of brittle rocks decreases with the grain size. However, very few systematic investigation of this phenomenon has been made using numerical method. This paper presents the results of a numerical simulation using the Rock Failure Process Analysis code (RFPA2D) to investigate the effects of grain size on the uniaxial compressive strength and the failure behavior of Yuen Long marble. The Weibull distribution with two parameters (m that characterizes the strength heterogeneity, and σ0 that corresponds to the mean strength of an element) selected based on micromechanical basis is used in the RFPA2D code for simulation. The simulated stress-strain curves of Yuen Long marbles with different grain sizes under uniaxial compressive condition agrees well with the experimental study. The progressive failure process was captured in the numerical simulations. Our simulations also reproduced the influence of grain size, with strength scaling approximately with the inverse square root of grain size, which is in agreement with the previous experimental study.

Abstract: A major challenge in rock mechanics has been the realistic modeling that can reveal the progressive accumulation of damage and shear localization in a brittle rock under compression. The Rock Failure Process Analysis code (RFPA^2D) is an efficient tool and realistic model to simulate such complexities. A key assumption of the code is that the heterogeneity of elastic moduli and failure strength are characterized by the Weibull distribution with two parameters (m and σ₀ ). However, these two parameters do automatically not relate to the microstructural parameters, such as grain size and microcrack statistics. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the micromechanical basis of these Weibull parameters, specifically how they depend on microstructural attributes such as grain size and crack statistics. Secondly, a methodology was developed to quantitatively determine the relevant micromechanical parameters for input into the RFPA^2D code. Finally, the methodology was implemented by quantifying the microcrack geometry and statistics of real rock and simulating its uniaxial compression and progressive failure behavior. The simulated result agrees well with the experimental study.