Description of damage process in fractured rocks

This paper is focused on analysis of the damage process in rock that contains some pre-existing fractures. The methodology employs an enhanced embedded discontinuity approach, which is extended here to account for the presence of multiple sets of joints. The approach can be easily implemented in standard FE codes and the results are virtually independent of mesh size/alignment. This is in view of incorporation of a ‘characteristic dimension’ which explicitly depends on discretization of the domain. It is demonstrated that the approach is capable of predicting complex fracture modes associated with formation and propagation of new cracks within the region that contains the pre-existing flaws.