Experimental Study on Mechanical Properties, Energy Dissipation Characteristics and Acoustic Emission Parameters of Compression Failure of Sandstone Specimens Containing En Echelon Flaws
To further understand the fracture behavior of rock materials containing en echelon flawsand determine precursor information for the final collapse of damaged mineral assemblies undercompression, a series of uniaxial compression experiments using a loading system, an acousticemission system and a video camera was conducted on sandstone specimens containing en echelonflaws. The mechanical properties, energy dissipation characteristics and acoustic emissionparameters of compression failure of selected specimens were successively analyzed. The resultsshowed that crack initiation was accompanied by a stress drop, step-like characteristics on theenergy consumption curve and increased crackling noises, which were used as early warningsignals before the final collapse happened. In addition, we used the histogram statistics methodand maximum likelihood method to analyze the distribution of acoustic emission energy anddetermined that the acoustic emission energy distributions of sandstone specimens containing enechelon flaws followed a power law. With the progress of the experiment, the optimum exponentschanged in different stages and gradually decreased as failure was approached, which could alsobe used as an early warning signal before the final collapse happened. This paper may providesome theoretical basis for monitoring and warning about the collapse and instability of engineeringrock masses containing en echelon flaws.