An Extended Hydro-Mechanical Coupling Model Based on Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics for Simulating Crack Propagation in Rocks under Hydraulic and Compressive Loads

Materials (Basel). 2023 Feb 13;16(4):1572. doi: 10.3390/ma16041572.

Abstract

A seepage model based on smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) was developed for the seepage simulation of pore water in porous rock mass media. Then, the effectiveness of the seepage model was proved by a two-dimensional seepage benchmark example. Under the framework of SPH based on the total Lagrangian formula, an extended hydro-mechanical coupling model (EHM-TLF-SPH) was proposed to simulate the crack propagation and coalescence process of rock samples with prefabricated flaws under hydraulic and compressive loads. In the SPH program, the Lagrangian kernel was used to approximate the equations of motion of particles. Then, the influence of flaw water pressure on crack propagation and coalescence models of rock samples with single or two parallel prefabricated flaws was studied by two numerical examples. The simulation results agreed well with the test results, verifying the validity and accuracy of the EHM-TLF-SPH model. The results showed that with the increase in flaw water pressure, the crack initiation angle and stress of the wing crack decreased gradually. The crack initiation location of the wing crack moved to the prefabricated flaw tip, while the crack initiation location of the shear crack was far away from the prefabricated flaw tip. In addition, the influence of the permeability coefficient and flaw water pressure on the osmotic pressure was also investigated, which revealed the fracturing mechanism of hydraulic cracking engineering.

Keywords: crack propagation; hydro-mechanical coupling; osmotic pressure; seepage model; smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH).