Numerical simulation of fracture propagation of heterogeneous material

For the Three Gorges granite, a finite difference software package FLAC was used to study failure process of heterogeneous rock material. Based on mineral components identification results of the granite and fuzzy clustering method, the actual image date was transformed into the finite difference grid by applying image processing techniques. A convenient and efficient two-dimensional numerical modeling method for heterogeneous geomaterials was presented. Then, failure process of the granite were simulated in uniaxial compression test based on experimental strain soft model, and the stress concentration phenomenon was analyzed. The results show that the numerical modeling method based on digital image processing can be used to calculate the mechanical responses of geomaterials by taking their heterogeneities into considerations.