Elastoplastic Damage Behavior of Rocks: A Case Study of Sandstone and Salt Rock

Experimental results provide strong evidence that the deformation and strength of rocks are closely related to the damage suffered during loading. The classic constitutive models such as Mohr-Coulomb criterion and the Drucker-Prager criterion are usually unable to describe the non-linear deformation behavior of rocks, including strain hardening and softening. Their applications in numerical analysis and practical engineering are limited. For this purpose, an elastoplastic damage constitutive model that takes into account the competition mechanism between damage and strain hardening or softening during rock compression is proposed herein. This model is used to investigate the deformation behaviors and damage evolution of rocks. More importantly, this model has been implemented by finite element programming code and verified by a series of triaxial compression tests. The comparison results between theoretical analysis and experimental data indicate that this model can well describe the stress-strain curves and damage-strain curves of the investigated rocks (sandstone and salt rock), especially the characteristics of softening, hardening and residual strength. Based on parametric analysis, the influence of confining pressure, scale parameter and shape parameter on rock damage is revealed. It is found that the rock scale parameter in this model has a power function relationship with confining pressure. The ultimate plastic deformation that rocks can withstand is related to the scale parameter. The shape parameter controls the residual strength and deformation of rocks. Model results demonstrate that the strength and deformation vary with rock properties, and are strongly dependent on the stress-induced damage and strain characteristics.