Modeling of Shear Crack Propagation in Rock Masses Using Mesh-Free LRPIM

The modeling of shear cracks in materials is critical in various engineering applications, such as the safety analysis of concrete structures and stability analysis of rock slopes. Based on the idea of Goodman element, the elastic-plastic constitutive model of the shear cracks is derived, and the elastic-plastic analysis of shear crack propagation is realized in the local radial basis point interpolation method (LRPIM). This method avoids the loss of accuracy caused by the mesh in the analysis of fracture propagation, and the crack propagation of rock brittle material is simulated. The investigation indicates that (1) the LRPIM results are close to the FDM results, which demonstrates that it is feasible to analyze shear cracks in rock masses. (2) Compared with the results of the built-in oblique crack model, when the LRPIM is used to analyze crack propagation, the results are close to the experimental results, showing that the LRPIM can model shear crack propagation in a rock mass. (3) The propagation path using the LRPIM is not sufficiently smooth, which can be explained as the crack tip stress and strain not being sufficiently accurate and still requiring further improvement.

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