Abstract
To study more fully the characteristic law of deformation and failure of tuff jointed rock mass of prefabricated parallel discontinuous joint test specimens, the uniaxial compression test was used. The stress–strain curve, peak intensity, deformation parameters, energy characteristics, etc., of the rock test specimens were systematically studied under different combinations of joint dip angle and joint spacing. The research found that: (1) during the failure process of tuff, the peak intensity and elastic modulus followed a U-shaped change pattern and the minimum value was reached when α = 60°; (2) the fracture modes of test specimens with different joint dip angles were different. When α = 30° and 45°, failure characteristics were mixed modes of tensile or tensile shear failure. When α = 60°, failure characteristics were shear. At α = 75°, the failure characteristic was tensile shear failure. (3) The absorbed and dissipated energy of the rock increased nonlinearly at each stage of deformation. (4) We quantified rock energy damage through a correlation between dissipated energy and absorbed energy of the rock in the process of energy evolution, and obtained an evolution of the relationship between the dissipated energy ratio, crack dip angle and crack spacing. Based on different fracture distribution methods and according to the strain equivalence principle, the constitutive equation of the pre-peak rock damage was obtained.