The elastic properties of fractured rocks
Abstract
The consequences of fracturing on rock mass strength still remain an issue for rock engineering practices, including excavation or repository design, support design, slope stability and caving in mines. The difficulty is twice and concerns both the description of the fracturing pattern, and the relationship between fracture characteristics and rock mass mechanical properties. This is generally assessed by empirical knowledge but no complete quantitative and theoretical relations are yet established. To our knowledge, the only theoretical work was to found a relationship between the elastic strength and the percolation parameter (i.e. a normalized sum of the cube of fracture radius) for 3D frictionless fracture networks. The relationship has been demonstrated for Poissonian (randomly distributed) low-density (i.e. where fractures are not almost intersecting) networks, with a narrow range of fracture radius. By means of finite-element models and Green's function methods, we extend the analysis to fracture networks with geologically realistic geometry: i.e. non-Poissonian, relatively high densities, and power-law length distributions. The elastic strength of the fractured rock mass is still found to decrease exponentially with the percolation parameter on average. But large deviations from the mean exist for heavy tailed fracture length distribution, i.e. when the probability of having fractures of the order of the system size is no more negligible. We discuss the way to ameliorate the prediction by taking into account configuration details that are not described by statistical parameters.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFM.H53A1408D
- Keywords:
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- 8010 STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY Fractures and faults;
- 3909 MINERAL PHYSICS Elasticity and anelasticity;
- 5104 PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF ROCKS Fracture and flow;
- 8160 TECTONOPHYSICS Rheology: general