Justification of fracture criteria for salt rocks

The study of salt rocks deformation and fracture processes is an essential part of mining parameters justification for mineral salt deposits. The results of uniaxial compression tests on large salt rock specimens are presented as a loading curve and diagrams of the transverse-longitudinal displacements at various distances from the side faces. Based on an isotropic elastoplastic model, a multivariant numerical simulation was performed. Its purpose was to select fracture criteria that accurately describe the loading diagram of specimen and its transverse-longitudinal deformations. The following fracture criteria are considered: Tresca with the associated plastic flow rule, the associated and non-associated Mohr-Coulomb, the parabolic analogue of Mohr-Coulomb criterion and the volumetric fracture criterion. Numerical simulation was carried out by the displacement-based finite element method. Three-dimensional hexahedral eight-node isoparametric elements were used for discretization of the solution domain. It has been established that within the elastoplastic model of media the process of uniaxial compression of a large cubic salt rock specimen is adequately described by the linear Mohr-Coulomb fracture criterion with the non-associated plastic flow, as well as by the associated volumetric parabolic yield criterion with the linear isotropic hardening.