Active Seismic Monitoring of Crack Initiation, Propagation, and Coalescence in Rock

Active seismic monitoring was used to detect and characterize crack initiation, crack propagation and crack coalescence in pre-cracked rock specimens. Uniaxial compression tests were conducted on Indiana limestone specimens with two parallel pre-existing cracks. During the experiments, the mechanically induced cracks around the flaw tips were monitored by measuring surface displacements using digital image correlation (DIC). Transmitted and reflected compressional and shear waves through the specimens were also recorded during the loading to detect any damage or cracking phenomena. The amplitude of transmitted compressional and shear waves decreased with uniaxial compression. However, the rate of decrease of the amplitude of the transmitted waves intensified well before the initiation of tensile cracks. In addition, a distinct minimum in the amplitude of transmitted waves occurred close to coalescence. The normalized amplitude of waves reflecting from the new cracks increased before new tensile and shear cracks initiated around the flaw tips. In addition, the location of new cracks could be identified using the traveling time of the reflected waves. The experimental results indicate that changes in normalized amplitude of transmitted and reflected signals associated with crack initiation and crack coalescence were detected much earlier than with DIC, at a load of about 80–90% of the load at which the cracks appeared on the surface. The tests show conclusively that active wave monitoring is an effective tool to detect damage and new cracks in rock, as well as to estimate the location of the new cracks.