A Nodal-Based 3D Discontinuous Deformation Analysis Method with Contact Potential for Discrete Rock Block System

To analyze the movement of discrete rock block systems, a nodal-based three-dimensional discontinuous deformation analysis method with contact potential (3D-NDDACP) is proposed. In the proposed 3D-NDDACP method, tetrahedral FE meshes which can be effectively generated with existing mesh generator are adopted to discretize rock blocks to better capture their deformation. Additionally, the contact potential is incorporated to treat the contact between two adjacent blocks. The introduction of contact potential significantly simplifies the implementation of the proposed 3D-NDDACP method, since the contact force can be directly computed without distinguishing contact types between any two adjacent blocks. However, in the traditional 3D-DDA method it is essential to conduct contact type judgment before computing contact forces. Note that contact type judgment is not a trivial task for 3D problems, since many different contact types including point-to-point contact, point-to-edge contact, point-to-face contact and edge-to-edge contact are involved. With the proposed 3D-NDDACP method, three benchmark problems about the movement of rock block systems are investigated. Numerical results obtained with the proposed 3D-NDDACP method are in good agreement with the theoretical solution, which means that the proposed 3D-NDDACP method can reliably and correctly simulate the movement of rock block systems. The proposed 3D-NDDACP method warrants further investigation.