Identifying mechanisms of environmentally driven long-term crack growth in brittle rocks

在接近开挖表面或地球表面的岩石中形成的裂缝可能会对现有的基础设施造成严重破坏，中断作业，并在发生意外故障时造成生命损失。即使没有造成严重破坏，形成的裂缝也可能导致安全壳设施的流动通道出现问题。通常，经验和数字设计侧重于损害的程度和缓解措施，很少关注长期过程。此外，环境驱动因素对裂纹扩展的影响仍然是研究的前沿。将工程实践改进到环境驱动的长期裂纹扩展机制、相关的危险和适当的缓解策略被包括在设计中是本计划的长期目标。该计划包括开发现场监测方法，设计反映现场条件的实验室测试情景，并利用这些发现来开发和验证危险评估和预测性数值工具。*短期内，该研究计划的目标是确定最合适的数值软件，以模拟长期裂纹扩展的环境影响，了解热循环对不同尺度上裂纹张开和扩展的影响，确定应力脆性岩石中的应力腐蚀是否是主导裂纹扩展机制，以及评估不同数据源从一个现场位置到另一个现场位置的可转移性。*用于实现上述目标的方法将包括各种实地、实验室和数值模拟方法。对于外地地点，地质测绘、强度估计和样本收集、先进的摄影测量和对结果的空间分析将加强监测数据，以解决这些信息可转移到新地点的问题。在实验室中，将使用在不同气候条件下的标准强度和先进的长期测试来表征岩石和裂缝行为，并为数值模型开发输入。反分析现场和实验室行为的模型将被计算，并与从普通工程到高级多物理和断裂力学软件的不同方法进行比较。这些发现将导致新的测试程序、监测和利用监测数据的新方法，最重要的是将导致开发急需的数值工具来捕捉长期裂纹扩展机制。*凭借申请人过去在这些领域的经验，加上HQP团队，该项目将在岩石和断裂力学领域以及近地表过程研究方面取得重大进展。预计将对土木工程界考虑和处理环境影响长期裂缝扩展的方式产生重大影响。

Cracks forming in rock near the surface of an excavation or at the Earth's surface can result in critical damage to existing infrastructure, disruption of operations, and loss of life when unexpected failures occur. Even if critical damage is not caused, the cracks formed can result in problematic flow pathways for containment facilities. Typically, empirical and numerical designs focus on the extent of damage and mitigation measures, with little attention to long-term processes. In addition, the influence of environmental drivers on crack growth remains a frontier of research. To improve engineering practice to the point that environmentally driven long-term crack growth mechanisms, the associated hazards and proper mitigation strategies are included in design is the long-term goal of this program. The program includes developing field monitoring methodologies, designing laboratory testing scenarios that reflect the field conditions, and using these findings to develop and validate hazard assessment and predictive numerical tools. ***In the short-term, the research program will aim to determine the most suitable numerical software to model environmental influence of long-term crack growth, to understand the influence of thermal cycles on the magnitude of crack opening and growth at different scales, to determine if stress corrosion in stressed brittle rock is a dominate crack growth mechanism over other identified mechanisms, and to evaluate the transferability of different data sources from one field location to another. ***The methods to be used to address the objectives mentioned above will include a variety of field, laboratory, and numerical modelling approaches. For the field sites, geological mapping, strength estimation and sample collection, advanced photogrammetric and spatial analysis of the results will augment the monitoring data to address the transferability of this information to new locations. In the laboratory, standard strength and advanced long-term tests under variable climates will be used to characterize the rock and crack behaviour and develop inputs for numerical models. Models to back analyze both the field and laboratory behavior will be computed and compared with different approaches from common engineering to advanced multi-physics and fracture mechanics software. These findings will lead to new testing procedures, novel methods of monitoring and utilizing monitoring data, and most importantly will lead to the development of much needed numerical tools to capture long-term crack growth mechanisms. ***With the applicant's past experience in these areas, along with a team of HQP, the program will make major advances in the areas of rock and fracture mechanics, and near surface process research. Major impacts on the way the Civil Engineering community thinks about and deals with environmental influences on long-term crack growth are expected.