Failure behavior of highly stressed rocks under quasi-static and intensive unloading conditions

Unloading failure of rocks,especially highly stressed rocks,is one of the key issues in construction of underground structures.Based on this,analytical models for rocks under quasi-static and intensive unloading conditions are established to study the failure behavior of highly stressed rocks.In case of rock failure under quasi-static unloading,the rock mass ahead of working face is regarded as an elasto-brittle material,and the stress-displacement curves are used to characterize the tensile fracture of peak-stress area.It is observed that,when intensive unloading happens,there is an elastic unloading wave（perturbation wave） propagating in the rock mass.If the initial stress exceeds the critical stress,there will be a fracture wave,following the elastic unloading wave.To study the propagation feature of fracture wave,the conservation laws of mass,momentum and energy are employed.Results show that the post-peak deformation,strength and energy dissipation are essential to the failure process of highly stressed rocks.

Ringlike failure experiment of thick-walled limestone cylinder specimens in triaxial unloading tests

In order to study the failure of surrounding rock under high in situ stress in deep underground engineering projects, disturbed by excavation unloading, we carried out triaxial unloading experiments using thickwalled cylinder specimens on a TATW-2000 rock servo-controlled triaxial testing machine in a laboratory. The specimens were made of limestone material, taken from Tongshan county, Xuzhou city, Jiangsu province, China. In our experiments, rock deformation and failure behavior was studied through loading and unloading of inner hole pressure of thick-walled cylinder specimens. At first, the axial stress, confining pressure and inner pressure were increased simultaneously to a specified designed state of stress. Then, keeping the axial stress and confining pressure stable, the pressure on the inner hole was decreased until the specimen was fractured. When the inner pressure was released completely but the specimen did not fracture, the confining pressure was decreased subsequently until complete failure occurred. Our experimental results suggest that traces of major circular ringlike fractures with a number of radial cracks often appear in thick cylinder walls. This type of ringlike failure phenomenon, similar to intermittent zonal fracturing characteristics of deep exploitation, has, so far, not been published. Our experimental results show that rock deformation and failure behavior of thick-walled limestone cylinders vary under different stress paths between loading and unloading. Tensile failure and orderly failure surfaces occur under unloading conditions while irregular damaged rock blocks are produced during loading failure. This type of triaxial unloading experiment provides for new research methodology and approach for thorough investigations on intermittent zonal fracturing in deep underground excavations.