Shear behavior and off-fault damage of saw-cut smooth and tension-induced rough joints in granite

The damage of rock joints or fractures upon shear includes the surface damage occurring at the contact asperities and the damage beneath the shear surface within the host rock.The latter is commonly known as off-fault damage and has been much less investigated than the surface damage.The main contribution of this study is to compare the results of direct shear tests conducted on saw-cut planar joints and tension-induced rough granite joints under normal stresses ranging from 1 MPa to 50 MPa.The shear-induced off-fault damages are quantified and compared with the optical microscope observation.Our results clearly show that the planar joints slip stably under all the normal stresses except under 50 MPa,where some local fractures and regular stick-slip occur towards the end of the test.Both post-peak stress drop and stick-slip occur for all the rough joints.The residual shear strength envelopes for the rough joints and the peak shear strength envelope for the planar joints almost overlap.The root mean square(RMS)of asperity height for the rough joints decreases while it increases for the planar joint after shear,and a larger normal stress usually leads to a more significant decrease or increase in RMS.Besides,the extent of off-fault damage(or damage zone)increases with normal stress for both planar and rough joints,and it is restricted to a very thin layer with limited micro-cracks beneath the planar joint surface.In comparison,the thickness of the damage zone for the rough joints is about an order of magnitude larger than that of the planar joints,and the coalesced micro-cracks are generally inclined to the shear direction with acute angles.The findings obtained in this study contribute to a better understanding on the frictional behavior and damage characteristics of rock joints or fractures with different roughness.

Effect of roughness on the shear behavior of rock joints subjected to impact loading

The shear behavior is regarded as the dominant property of rock joints and is dramatically affected by the joint surface roughness.To date,the effect of surface roughness on the shear behavior of rock joints under static or cyclic loading conditions has been extensively studied,but such effect under impact loading conditions keeps unclear.To address this issue,a series of impact shear tests was performed using a novel-designed dynamic experimental system combined with the digital image correlation(DIC)technique.The dynamic shear strength,deformability and failure mode of the jointed specimens with various joint roughness coefficients(JRC)are comprehensively analyzed.Results show that the shear strength and shear displacement characteristics of the rock joint under the impact loading keep consistent with those under static loading conditions.However,the temporal variations of shear stress,slip displacement and normal displacement under the impact loading conditions show obviously different behaviors.An elastic rebound of the slip displacement occurs during the impact shearing and its value increases with increasing joint roughness.Two identifiable stages(i.e.compression and dilation)are observed in the normal displacement curves for the rougher rock joints,whereas the joints with small roughness only manifest normal compression displacement.Besides,as the roughness increases,the maximum compression tends to decrease,while the maximum dilation gradually increases.More-over,the microstructural analysis based on scanning electron microscope(SEM)suggests that the roughness significantly affects the characteristics of the shear fractured zone enclosing the joint surface.

Propagation dynamics of ring Airy Gaussian beams with cosine modulated optical vortices

We numerically investigate the propagation properties of ring Airy Gaussian beams(RAGBs) with cosine modulated optical vortices(CMOV). In comparison to the common RAGBs without any modulation, the dynamic propagation of RAGBs with CMOV exhibits a unique feature: the rings of RAGBs with CMOV will gradually shrink into several main lobes with the increase of the propagation distance. The number of lobes and the peak intensity of each lobe are determined by the factors of cosine modulated function. By designing the initial phase,we can easily change the transversal location of the peak intensity. Our results may find potential applications in optical manipulations.