Influence of loading rate on the mode II fracture characteristics of SCC samples: Experiments and numerical simulations

This paper explores the influence of loading rate on mode II fracture failure in rock. Impact experiments were performed on samples of SCC at five different impact pressures via an SHPB system. This study reveals the correlations among the peak load, fracture toughness, and dynamic elastic modulus of rock mode II fractures under diverse loading rates, as well as the alterations in fracture trajectories. Simultaneously, PFC3D discrete element software has been adopted to numerically simulate the experiments and analysis of the fracture process of rocks and the variations in crack quantity and energy from a microscopic perspective. The results suggest that dynamic mode II fracture tends to increase as the loading rate increases and that the loading rate affects the fracture failure trajectory of a sample. Concurrently, as loading increased, the percentage of shear cracks in the samples gradually decreased, whereas the proportion of tensile cracks gradually increased, indicating that the samples experienced compressive stress after mode II fracture occurred at high loading rates. The proportion of energy absorbed by the samples for crack initiation and development, as well as the kinetic energy of the particles, initially tends to decrease but then increases with increasing loading rate, which is related to whether the loading rate generates secondary cracks. It is hypothesized that there exists a critical loading rate that triggers secondary cracks in SCC samples.