Spatial Characterization of Single-Cracked Space Based on Microcrack Distribution in Sandstone Failure

Abstract

To further understand the rock damage zone, an approach based on microcrack distribution was proposed to characterize the crack space of rock specimens in this research. Acoustic emission (AE) technology was utilized on sandstone to obtain the spatial distribution of microcracks in which uniaxial compression forms the single-cracked fracture. The proposed theoretical distribution pattern space (TDPS), 3D convex hull, and the minimum volume enclosing ellipsoid (MVEE) algorithms were adopted to analyze the geometric features of the crack space. It was found that the 3D convex hull method returned the smallest results in both area and volume of the crack space, and the largest results were provided by the proposed TDPS method. The difference between the results of the proposed TDPS method and the MVEE method became smaller after 85%. The deviation angle of the principal axis of the cracked space gradually decreased as the spatial scale decreased, while the other two major axes exhibited a tendency to increase at the 65% scale. The results indicate that a spatial scale from 65% to 85% is a reliable range for the characterization of crack space.