Numerical investigation of the opening effect on the mechanical behaviours in rocks under uniaxial loading using hybrid continuum-discrete element method

Openings including their size, shape and distribution in rock play a significant role in the performance of rock related structures. The well-established knowledge in this area can contribute to the engineering practices, for example, underground space design, planning and optimisation in Civil and Mining Engineering and wellbore stability in Drilling Engineering, among others. Thus, understanding the failure mechanism of rock with openings is theoretically and practically meaningful. Laboratory testing on rock or rock-like materials with openings have been studied extensively in the literature, which, however, primarily focuses on the cracks/fractures. In this paper, a comprehensive numerical study on the effect of non-banded openings, i.e., circular, rectangular, and triangular opening, on the rock mechanical behaviour is performed using a hybrid continuum-discrete element method. It is revealed that the proposed simulation method can reproduce reasonably the crack initiation and propagation, and predict well the change of the mechanical behaviour due to the openings. In addition, the influence of the opening shape and opening ratio (=area of opening/specimen area) on the mechanical behaviour is also investigated.