A coupled elastoplastic damage model for brittle rocks and its application in modelling underground excavation

•Develop a coupled elastoplastic damage model for brittle rocks.•Propose computation procedure for decoupling plasticity and damage.•Simulate pre- and post-peak plastic deformation and damage failure of a limestone.•Use it to model the excavation and evaluating the EDZs of an underground powerhouse.

This study develops a coupled elastoplastic damage model for brittle rocks within the framework of irreversible thermodynamics. In the model, degradations in the deformation and strength of rocks induced by damage are considered in the elastic stiffness matrix and plastic yield criterion. The thermodynamic force associated with damage is expressed as a state function of elastic strain and the internal plastic variable. The damage potential and criterion, as functions of the thermodynamic force, are constructed to describe the damage evolution of rocks, and to determine whether they are damaged, respectively. Constitutive relationships, and their numerical formulations of a return mapping algorithm for finite element method implementation, are deduced under three different loading conditions: damage, plastic and coupled plastic damage. For engineering application, the developed model is implemented in the finite element programme Abaqus as a user-defined material model (UMAT). The coupled model is then used for simulating the re-distributed stress fields, displacement and EDZs of the sidewall rock mass around the underground powerhouse of the Wudongde hydropower plant.