Natural soil and rock materials and the associated artificial materials have cracks, fractures, or contacts and possibly produce rock fragments or particles during geological, environmental, and stress conditions. Based on color gradient distribution, a digital image processing method was proposed to automatically recognize the outlines of fractures, fragments, and particles. Then, the fracture network, block size distribution, and particle size distribution were quantitatively characterized by calculating the fractal dimension and equivalent diameter distribution curve. The proposed approach includes the following steps: production of an image matrix; calculation of the gradient magnitude matrix; recognition of the outlines of fractures, fragments, or particles; and characterization of the distribution of fractures, fragments, or particles. Case studies show that the fractal dimensions of cracks in the dry mud layer, ceramic panel, and natural rock mass are 1.4332, 1.3642, and 1.5991, respectively. The equivalent diameters of fragments of red sandstone, granite, and marble produced in quasi-static compression failures are mainly distributed in the ranges of 20–40 mm, 25–65 mm, and 10–35 mm, respectively. The fractal dimension of contacts between mineral particles and the distribution of the equivalent diameters of particles in rock are 1.6381 and 0.8–3.6 mm, respectively. The proposed approach provides a computerized method to characterize quantitatively and automatically the structure characteristics of soil/rock or soil/rock-like materials. By this approach, the remote sensing for characterization can be achieved.
Underground excavation is a necessary process for constructing mines, tunnels and depots in granite rock mass. In this study, the numerical granite specimens were established by the discrete element method and confirmed by laboratory experiments in order to investigate the peak stress, cracking development and failure properties of pre-holed granite under coupled biaxial loading and unloading conditions. The results show that, for the specimens containing D-type and square holes, the peak biaxial unloading strengths first decrease, then increase and finally decrease as the inclination angles of the holes increase. For the specimens with elliptical holes, the peak biaxial unloading strengths first decrease and then increase with the increases in the inclination angles of the holes. The biaxial unloading strengths of specimens containing elliptical, circular, D-type and square holes decrease in that order. The cracks initially appear near the crossover points between the X-type shear fracturing plane and the pre-hole in the center and gradually expand along the X-type shear direction, which indicates that the failure of pre-holed granite is primarily shear failure. When the overall length of cracks expanding along the X-type shear direction extends to the size of the pre-hole in the center, the failure of the pre-holed specimen occurs. When the existing pre-hole in the center of the granite specimen extends to connect with the shear slip in the vicinity of the hole, this triggers overall failure.
In this study, numerical simulations of uniaxial compression, biaxial compression, and biaxial unloading were performed on granite specimens that contained different prefabricated defects. The microscopic parameters in numerical models were verified by the uniaxial compression experiments on the intact standard cylindrical granite specimen and the square granite specimens with prefabricated defects. The influences from different stress paths, different shapes of prefabricated defects, different numbers of defects, and different distribution of defects on the strength, deformation, and crack initiation stress characteristics of the rock specimens were investigated. Furthermore, the initial cracking and cracking stage distributions, cumulative crack amounts, ultimate failure modes, and crack propagation fractal dimensions of specimens with different prefabricated defects under biaxial unloading conditions were analyzed and compared. The experiment was divided into three stages to analyze crack evolution mechanisms. The results show that most cracks appeared after peak strength, and different shapes, the number of defects, and the relative defect positions significantly affected crack initiation, crack propagation, and crack coalescence.
Fractures in the overburden induced by mining disturbances provide a channel for fluid flow between the surface and the underground. Mining-induced strata movement and fracture distribution are influenced by the gravity and dip angles of rock seams. In this paper, a new three-dimensional theoretical distribution model for void fraction in each partition of overlying rock strata disturbed by inclined coal seam mining was constructed. Based on the theoretical determination model, the three-dimensional random distribution characteristics for void fraction were obtained by combining the random distribution law of void fraction obtained by similar physical simulation experiments and image processing techniques. Theoretical deterministic models, stochastic theoretical models, and similar physical simulations all show that void fraction distribution in the tendency direction of the coal seam shows a bimodal asymmetric distribution with high and low peaks and a symmetric distribution in the strike direction. The void fraction of the overburden in the central part of the mining area is smaller than that of the surrounding area. The results of the theoretically determined model and stochastic model of the void fraction for the strata with different mining lengths and different coal seam inclinations were compared with the results of similar simulation experiments, respectively. The results are in agreement, further verifying the practicality of the model.
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