Simulación de ensayos triaxiales de granito mediante el código PFC

Abstract

One of the most relevant problems in rock mechanics is to determine the complete stress-strain behavior of rocks in both laboratory and field scale. Whereas there are some suggested standard procedures to compute elastic and peak criterion parameters starting from laboratory data, post-failure behavior is still under research in order to appropriately define theoretical frameworks and parameters to represent this behavior. Arzúa & Alejo (2013) carried out a comprehensive laboratory program to study the complete stress-strain behavior of intact samples of Blanco Mera granite. We use these results to fit micro-mechanical parameters in the bonded-particle model to try to recover the observed laboratory behavior. First, we have tried with the parallel-bond model defined in Potyondy & Cundall (2004), but we have found difficult to recover the actual frictional response of rock sample. To overcome these difficulties the flat-joint model defined by Potyondy (2012) was then used for modeling and the results obtained improve the quality of the simulations, which are also able to reproduce the main post-failure behavioral trends.