Simulation of Near-Field Ground Motion in Anisotropic Jointed Rock Masses Triggered by Underground Chemical Explosions

Session: Explosion Seismology Advances [Poster]
Type: Poster
Date: 4/29/2020
Time: 08:00 AM
Room: Ballroom
Description: 

Jointed rock masses are inherently anisotropic due to preferential orientation of joints. Joints often have three main orientations which are nearly orthogonal resulting in elastically orthotropic medium. A thermomechanical anisotropic elastic-plastic model has been developed for shock wave generation and propagation in jointed rock formations by various sources such as underground explosions and strong earthquakes. The model parameters are calibrated using meso-scale simulations of quasi-static loadings of a representative volume element (RVE) of jointed rock at different angles. We perform direct comparison of expensive simulations of underground chemical explosions in jointed rock masses where the joints are explicitly modelled as embedded discontinuities with the simulations using effective anisotropic continuum model informed by calculated mechanical response of typical REV with embedded joints. The resulting anisotropic continuum model provides a substantial reduction of the computational burden for numerical modeling of large-scale problems involving rock masses with billions of joints.

Presenting Author: Oleg Y. Vorobiev

Authors