Simulating damage evolution and fracture propagation in sandstone containing a preexisting 3-D surface flaw under uniaxial compression

Preexisting flaws and rock heterogeneity have important ramifications on the process of rock fracturing and on rock stability in many applications. Therefore, there is great interest in numerical modelling of rock fracture and the underlying mechanisms. We simulated damage evolution and fracture propagation in sandstone specimens containing a preexisting 3-D surface flaw under uniaxial compression. We applied the linear elastic damage model based on the unified strength theory following the rock failure process analysis code. However, in contrast to the rock failure process analysis code, we used the finite element method with tetrahedron elements on unstructured meshes. It provided higher geometrical flexibility and allowed for a more accurate representation of the disk-shaped flaw with various flaw depths, angles, and lengths through locally adapted meshes. The rock heterogeneity was modelled by sampling the initial local Young's modulus from a Weibull distribution over a cubic grid. The values were then interpolated to the computational finite element method mesh. This method introduced an additional length scale for the rock heterogeneity represented by the cell size in the sampling grid. The generation of three typical surface cracking patterns, called wing cracks, anti-wing cracks, and far-field cracks, were identified in the simulation results. These depend on the geometry of the preexisting surface flaw. The simulated fracture propagation, coalescence types, and failure modes for the specimens with preexisting surface flaw show good agreement with recent experimental studies.