Effect of strain rate on the fracture behavior of granite under unconfined compression: A meso-scale energy evolution perspective

Abstract

The macro mechanical behavior of rock material is attributed to the meso/mineral characteristics. To deeply reveal the mechanisms of strain rate effect on mechanical properties and crack propagation, a series of unconfined compression experiments and simulations for exploring the meso-scale characteristic were conducted at different strain rates. Based on the micro-loading equipment with microphotography capabilities and the numerical grain-based model method, the meso-scale crack propagation and energy evolution characteristics of granite during the pre-peak loading process were analyzed. The results indicate that with the increase of strain rate, the crack distribution entropy value increases, which means that cracks are more evenly distributed among various minerals. The differences in stored elastic strain energy among different minerals decrease, resulting in more uniform energy release. In addition, cracks associated with biotite transits from intergranular to transgranular modes. Therefore, the increased strain rate can prompt more minerals to participate in deformation, thereby enhancing the mechanical properties. This study deeply reveals the mechanisms of strain rate on granite crack propagation at the meso-scale, offering valuable insights for the stability and safety of underground space engineering.

Keywords

Granite / Strain rate effect mechanisms / Meso-scale / Crack propagation / Energy evolution

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Qinyuan Liang: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft, Formal analysis, Software, Investigation, Methodology. Hengxing Lan: Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Conceptualization, Supervision. Yu Zhou: Writing - review & editing, Validation, Methodology, Software, Conceptualization, Formal analysis. Shijie Liu: Methodology, Data curation, Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization. Bo Li: Writing - review & editing, Methodology, Software. Langping Li: Validation, Data curation, Conceptualization. Han Bao: Data curation, Conceptualization, Validation.

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.

Acknowledgement

The authors greatly acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42041006, 42402277, and 52204146), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) program (Grant No. 2019QZKK0904), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, CHD (Grant Nos. 300102265718 and 300102264902).

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