PFC3D Pre-Cracked Specimen Simulation: Setup and Parameters

A pre-cracked specimen was created in PFC3D, as shown in Fig. 2. The specimen length, width and height were 65 mm, 30 mm and 150 mm, respectively. Echelon cracks (YZ-I and YZ-II), with the length of 20 mm, width of 2 mm, and inclination angle of 60°, were created inside the sample by deleting the particles at the position of pre-cracks. The angle and length of rock bridge were 90° and 20 mm, respectively. To satisfy the quasi-static loading, the loading speed was set to 0.0065 m/s (less than 0.08m/s) [30]. The ratio between the characteristic size of the specimen and the average diameter of the particles was 15. The specimen contains 45435 particles.