Abstract
Inadvertent violent rock failures on a large scale have resulted in personnel injuries, loss of lives, production delays, equipment damage, infrastructure issues, mine closures, and the forfeit of entire mineral reserves. The absence of adequate understanding regarding rock failure behavior has led to these significant repercussions. This violent rock failure poses a substantial threat to the future exploration of deep mining resources worldwide. Understanding the complete process of rock deformation, encompassing pre-peak and post-peak regimes and the associated reduction in rock load-carrying capacity, holds critical importance across mining engineering projects and mineral exploration operations.
An extensive experimental study was conducted to investigate the mechanisms governing violent/non-violent rock failure. Tests were conducted under quasi-static monotonic loading as well as pre-peak and post-peak cyclic loading. Various loading methods were employed for monotonic tests, including axial displacement-controlled, lateral displacement-controlled, and a linear combination of stress and strain methods. Introducing a new brittleness index derived from fracture strain-energy quantities extracted from the complete stress-strain curve of rocks in compressive tests, this proposed index bears relevance across multiple engineering applications.