Mechanical and cracking behavior of granite containing two coplanar flaws under conventional triaxial compression

Flaws widely exist in rock mass, which significantly influences the strength and failure behavior of rock. The study of the flaw effect on the mechanical and cracking behavior is important to predict the unstable failure of fractured rock engineering. However, three-dimensional crack propagation behavior of real rock containing preexisting flaws under triaxial compression has been rarely studied. To increase the understanding of crack coalescence behavior, a series of laboratory conventional triaxial compression experiments were carried out on granite specimens containing two coplanar three-dimensional flaws. On the basis of experimental results, the effects of flaw angle and confining pressure on the strength properties of granite specimens were analyzed. As the flaw angle increased from 30° to 60° and the confining pressure increased from 0 to 30 MPa, the triaxial compressive strength and crack damage threshold of granite specimen increased. The cohesion and internal friction angle of preflawed granite specimen increased with increasing flaw angle. And then, X-ray micro-CT scanning technique was used to investigate the internal fracture characteristic of granite specimen. Four typical crack coalescence modes were identified in this experiment, i.e. no coalescence, two types of indirect coalescence, and shear coalescence. Under uniaxial compression, cracks from the tips of the flaws led to the specimen failure under tension, while under higher confining pressure, shear cracks and antiwing cracks were dominant.