Influence of Intermittent Artificial Crack Density on Shear Fracturing and Fractal Behavior of Rock Bridges: Experimental and Numerical Studies

Shear-box experiments, Rock Failure Process Analysis (RFPA) simulations, and box-counting fractal analysis on rock-like models are conducted to investigate the influence of intermittent artificial crack density on the shear fracturing and fractal behavior of rock bridges in jointed rock slopes. The artificial crack geometry of the conceptual rock bridge model is a combination of two edge-notched artificial cracks and imbedded artificial cracks with different intermittent artificial crack densities. By numerical shear-box tests, deep insight into the mesoscopic mechanism of crack evolution is gained, and the simulated failure patterns are in accordance with experimental results. Three types of failure patterns are identified: shear mode, mixed shear/tensile mode, and tensile mode. The RFPA simulations demonstrate that macroscale shear cracks form as damage belts consisting of many tensile/shear mesocracks, as typically observed in microscopic experimental work. The failure pattern is mostly influenced by the intermittent artificial crack density, whereas the peak shear strength is related to the failure pattern. As the intermittent artificial crack density increases, the failure pattern changes from shear mode to mixed shear/tensile mode and then to tensile mode, resulting in a decrease in the peak shear strength. The regression analysis shows that the relationship between the peak shear strength and intermittent artificial crack density can be expressed by an exponential decay model. Furthermore, digital image processing and box-counting fractal analyses are performed on the shear fracture surfaces of the physical and numerical models to describe the fractal behavior. The relationships between the fractal dimension and peak shear strength are analyzed, and strong correlations that display an exponential decay function are found.