Coupled TM-damage modeling and global sensitivity analysis of thermal spalling in heterogeneous rocks

Abstract

Thermal spalling in heterogeneous rocks under rapid heating poses critical risks to deep mining and geothermal operations. In this study, we develop a coupled thermal–mechanical–damage (TM-D) model that explicitly incorporates Weibull distributed heterogeneity to a single fracture in rock, and validate it against ceramic quenching and granite acoustic emission experiments. Distance based generalized sensitivity analysis (DGSA) is applied to quantify the influence and interactions of key parameters, revealing the dominant controls on spalling onset, severity, and damage morphology. The results demonstrate that thermal stress dominates crack initiation and propagation, that lateral constraints can significantly delay and suppress spalling, and that material heterogeneity markedly influences peak stress and damage modes within a certain range of thermal expansion coefficient and has multiple effects on thermal spalling. This study provides a theoretical basis for quantitative assessment and parameter optimization of thermal spalling processes in rock masses.

Keywords

Rock heterogeneity / Thermal spalling / Microstructure evolution / Sensitivity analysis / Parameter interaction effect

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Liyuan Liu: Writing – original draft, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Mingshan Shi: Writing – review & editing, Validation, Software, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Derek Elsworth: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Tao Wang: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Hongguang Ji: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Le Zhang: Writing – review & editing, Software, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Yaohui Li: Writing – review & editing, Software, Investigation, Data curation.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52574100, 52574001, and 52311530070), the Major National Science and Technology Project for Deep Earth of China (No. 2024ZD1003805), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (No. FRF-IDRY-20-003, Interdisciplinary Research Project for Young Teachers of USTB). DE gratefully acknowledges support from the G. Albert Shoemaker endowment. This ensemble support is gratefully acknowledged.

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