Phenomenological modelling of crack generation in brittle crustal rocks using the particle simulation method

The particle simulation method is used in this paper to explicitly simulate spontaneous crack generation in brittle crustal rocks. Although the method was previously used to simulate crack generation in small-scale laboratory specimens and mining sites, it has seldom been used to simulate spontaneous crack generation in large-scale geological systems. If a geological system can be treated as a quasi-static one, the mechanical response of the system should be independent of the loading rate. Based on this understanding, we have compared the commonly-used continuous loading procedure with a newly-proposed discontinuous loading procedure, which is independent of the loading rate within the elastic range of a particle system. The use of the discontinuous loading procedure enables the macroscopic elastic modulus of a two-dimensional particle system to be directly evaluated from the particle stiffness. However, the particle-size sensitivity analysis of at least two different models needs to be conducted for dealing with the particle size-dependent issue when the particle simulation method is applied to solve crack generation problems in geological systems. Through the phenomenological modeling of spontaneous crack generation problems, it has been demonstrated that the particle simulation method is useful for simulating spontaneous crack generation phenomena at geological length scales.