Experiments on failure process of new rock-like specimens with two internal cracks under biaxial loading and the 3-D simulation

A new resin material has been developed by massive formula exploration. The resin is thoroughly transparent and rock-like at low temperatures. Its tension–compression strength ratio is up to 1/6.6 in the temperature range of − 10 to − 15 °C. It can simulate quite a few kinds of engineering rocks. Specimens have been made with two internal cracks. The progressive failures under uniaxial and biaxial compressions are systematically studied. The uniaxial failure process is divided into four stages as conventional rock mechanics test. Several forms of secondary cracks, like anti-wing cracks in the biaxial experiment with high lateral pressure, have seldom been described by former scholars. Three-dimensional numerical simulation has been conducted using FLAC3D. A novel elastic-brittle constitutive model is developed and programed. Superfine mesh generation is demanded as well. Both uniaxial and biaxial results of the new numerical approach show excellent consistency with experimental results in this paper.