A discontinuum-based model to simulate compressive and tensile failure in sedimentary rock

The study presented in this paper discusses a discontinuum-based model for investigating strength and failure in sedimentary rocks. The model has been implemented by UDEC to incorporate an innovative orthotropic cohesive constitutive law for contact. To reach this purpose, a user-defined model has been established by creating dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and attaching them into the code. The model reproduces rock material by a dense collection of irregular-sized deformable particles interacting at their cohesive boundaries which are viewed as flexible contacts whose stress-displacement law is assumed to control the fracture and the fragmentation behaviours of the material. The model has been applied to a sandstone. The individual and interactional effects of the microstructural parameters on the material compressive and tensile failure responses have been examined. In addition, the paper presents a new methodical calibration procedure to fit the modelling microparameters. It is shown that the model can successfully reproduce the rock mechanical behaviour quantitatively and qualitatively. The study also shows how discontinuum-based modelling can be used to characterize the relation between the microstructural parameters and the macro-scale properties of a material.