AN INVESTIGATION IN CONSTITUTIVE MODELS FOR DAMAGE SIMULATION OF ROCK MATERIAL

The development and exploitation of efficient constitutive models is a persistent challenge in failure analysis and damage simulation. This is true also in case of investigation in drilling technique. In this case the failure of rocks for the creation of a bore is the desired outcome. The compressive loading of rocks is however a complex phenomenon that provoke shear cracking till the onset of the ultimate failure. The primary objective of this study is to investigate numerically the response of a sandstone rock under uniaxial compressive loading. It has been attempted to find a material model can be used as an affordable and alternative to expensive field testing. Explicit FE analysis has been performed in this study, using the commercial software LS-DYNA. These numerical analyses are compared to an experimental program: unconfined compression test. Comparison between experimental data and numerical model is herein presented and critically discussed.