Effect of rock shapes on brittle fracture using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Abstract

Breakage of rocks or particulates plays a major role in various industries, such as mineral and ore processing. Many of the processes used for fracturing materials in these industries have the requirement to produce specified size and/or shape of the products. Numerical modelling can assist in understanding and predicting complex fracture processes, and can be used in designing the equipment and setting the process parameters to ensure desired product quality. In this paper, a mesh-free numerical method, called Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), is extended to predict impact fracture of rocks. SPH is a particle based Lagrangian method which is particularly suited to the analysis of fracture due to its capacity to model large deformation and track the free surfaces generated. A continuum damage model is used to predict the fracture of rocks. Evolution of damage is predicted using the strain history of each particle. Damage inhibits the transmission of tensile stress between particles, and once it reaches unity, the particle is unable to transmit tensile stress, resulting in a macro-crack. Connected macro-cracks lead to complete fragmentation. Firstly, an Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) test under uniaxial compression of a rock sample is modelled using SPH and compared against experiments to validate the capability of SPH for prediction of fracture in rocks. The SPH prediction matched the well-known experimentally observed diagonal fracture pattern. SPH is subsequently used to simulate brittle fracture of rocks during impact. Rock specimens of different shapes are examined to determine the effects of shape on both the fracture pattern and the energy dissipation during impact fracture. Rock shape is found to have considerable influence on the fracture process, fragment sizes, energy dissipation, and post-fracture motion of the fragments.