Compound-mode crack propagation law of PMMA semicircular-arch roadway specimens under impact loading

An underground roadway usually contains defects of various types, and when the roadway is subjected to external loading, the locations of those defects influence the roadway by differing degrees. In this study, to study how the locations of defects affect crack propagation in a roadway, specimens with tunnel-type voids were made using polymethyl methacrylate, and the stress wave produced by a bullet impacting an incident rod was used as the impact load. Meanwhile, the variations in crack speed, displacement, and dynamic stress intensity factor during crack propagation were obtained using an experimental system of digital laser dynamic caustics, and the commercial software ABAQUS was used for numerical simulations. From the experiments and numerical simulations, the crack propagation path was verified and the impact fracture behavior of a semicircular-arch roadway with different defect positions was presented. The results show that when the pre-fabricated crack is on the central axis of the sample, the crack propagation is purely mode I; when the pre-fabricated crack is 5 mm from the central axis, the crack propagation alternates between mode I and a mixture of modes I and II; when the pre-fabricated crack is at the edge of the semicircular-arch roadway, the crack propagation follows the I–II mixed mode.