Full-field strain evolution and characteristic stress levels of rocks containing a single pre-existing flaw under uniaxial compression

In this study, full-field strain evolution and characteristic stress levels of marble samples containing a single pre-existing flaw were comprehensively studied. The full-field strain was performed by digital image correlation (DIC) method, and the variations of characteristic stress levels with respect to inclination angle were discussed. To compare the experimental results, discrete element method was adopted, and the full-field stress evolution was reproduced to reappraise the localization zones. The results indicate that the presence of pre-existing flaws induces strain localization and degradation of mechanical properties for pre-cracked samples. When the strain localization firstly appeared surrounding pre-existing flaws, the axial stress levels at this moment increase with regard to inclination angle, leading to the increase of peak strength, crack initiation stress, crack damage stress, and normalized crack initiation stress. The normalized crack damage stress obtained by experiments shows flaw independency, and the results were verified by simulation results. Based on the full-field stress evolution, the tensile stress in x direction concentrates around pre-existing flaw and its location moves towards flaw tips with the increase of inclination angle. The compressive stress in y direction around pre-existing flaw is lower than other zones, revealing the upper and bottom surfaces of pre-existing flaw deform to each other. When the numerical models are subjected to same axial loading, the full-field stress around pre-existing flaw decrease as the inclination angle increases, which confirmed the results of full-field strain evolution and elucidated the pre-existing flaw with large inclination angle has less effect on degrading the mechanical properties.