Stavrou, A, Vazaios, I, Murphy, W orcid.org/0000-0002-7392-1527 et al. (1 more author) (2019) Refined Approaches for Estimating the Strength of Rock Blocks. Geotechnical and Geological Engineering, 37 (6). pp. 5409-5439. ISSN 0960-3182
Abstract
Micro-discrete fracture networks (μDFNs) have been integrated into grain-based models (GBMs) within the numerical software UDEC to assess rock block strength through a series of unconfined compressive strength (UCS) tests of progressively larger in size numerical specimens. GBMs were generated by utilizing a Voronoi tessellation scheme to capture the crack evolution processes within the intact rock material, and μDFNs were separately created and embedded into the GBMs to simulate the effect of pre-existing defects. Various μDFNs realisations were generated stochastically within the software FracMan to assess the combined impact of defect intensity, persistence, strength and specimen size. The resulting synthetic rock block models were used to assess the “flawed” material strength at block scale through a rigorous sensitivity numerical analysis. The acquired results predict a progressive strength reduction with decreasing intact rock quality and certain trends are captured when rock block strength is expressed as a function of a newly proposed “Defect Intensity× Persistence” factor. This allow us to standardise the data along specific strength reduction envelopes and to propose generic relationships that cover a wide range of defect geometrical combinations, defect strengths and sample sizes. Accordingly, an attempt is undertaken to refine two existing empirical approaches that consider the effect of scale and micro-defects explicitly for predicting the UCS of rock blocks.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Rock block strength; Scale effect; Pre-existing defects; Synthetic rock block; UDEC; FracMan |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Applied Geosciences (IAG) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 21 Jun 2019 13:19 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:52 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10706-019-00989-9 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:147634 |
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