Microscopic Failure Mechanism Analysis of Rock Under Dynamic Brazilian Test Based on Acoustic Emission and Moment Tensor Simulation

The dynamic tensile failure of rock is a main failure mode in deep underground engineering projects. The microscopic failure mechanism analysis of this failure mode plays a key role in dynamic disaster warning. Moment tensor inversion is a very well-known method used to analyze failure mechanisms. However, an acoustic emission (AE) event cannot be accurately distinguished in rock dynamic experiments at the laboratory scale, because there are hundreds of AE events generated within a few hundred microseconds in one dynamic test. Therefore, moment tensor analysis is rarely applied in rock dynamic tests with laboratory scale. In this paper, AE and moment tensor simulations with the discrete element method (DEM) are introduced to analyze the microscopic failure mechanism of rock under a dynamic Brazilian test. Comparing the simulation results of AE and moment tensor analysis with the simulation results of micro-crack with DEM, the moment tensor discriminant method can obtain the mechanical mechanism and energy level of micro-cracks. Furthermore, R, which is the ratio of isotropic and deviatoric components of the moment tensor, is used to analyze the AE source mechanism. The implosion, shear, and tensile of the AE source mechanism can better explain the evolution process of main axial crack and the shear failure zones of the Brazilian disc specimen under dynamic tensile simulation. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the microscopic failure mechanism of rock under a dynamic tensile test than the statistical types of micro-cracks based on break bonds with DEM.