Mechanical behavior and failure mechanism of pre-cracked specimen under uniaxial compression

- The strength, deformation and cracking processes of pre-cracked specimens are studied.
- The evolution of stress field is explored.
- An optimized slotted borehole arrangement method is proposed.

As a desirable permeability enhancement method, hydraulic slotting has been widely used for enhanced coal bed methane (ECBM) recovery in China. Aiming at the problem that the action mechanism of the slot on the mechanical properties of the slotted coal is still unclear, this paper investigates the effects of flaw inclination on the strength, deformation and cracking process of the pre-cracked specimens. The result shows that the stress-strain curves can be divided into three categories based on the stress behaviors, dropping step by step or dropping sharply, after the peak. With an increase of the flaw inclination, the strength and elastic modulus of the pre-cracked specimen increases gradually, which is verified by the numerical simulation and theoretical results. Analysis of the cracking processes indicates that the initiation position of the first crack in specimens with various flaw inclinations is different, which is caused by the various distributions of tensile and compressive stress concentration zones. The distribution of the stress field controls the cracking process which will in turn affect the stress field distribution. With the propagation of the cracks, the tensile stress concentration zones expand and the concentration degree lowers gradually, while the compressive stress concentration zones show the opposite variation trend. Based on the above results, an optimized slot arrangement method has been proposed for the field application of hydraulic slotting.