Failure Criteria for Isotropic Rocks Using a Smooth Approximation of Modified Mohr–Coulomb Failure Function

It is reported that strength of rocks is a function of three-dimensional (3D) stress state as observed from the large sets of experimental results under the true-triaxial condition. Triaxial compression test data in general is readily available for rocks, but in practice true-triaxial facilities are seldom used. This creates a requirement for 3D failure criterion, which can be used to predict the true-triaxial strength using simple triaxial compression test data. We have proposed three criteria by altering the deviatoric function of modified Mohr–Coulomb criterion (Singh et al. in Int J Rock Mech Min Sci 48(4):546–555, 2011). The proposed criteria represent the behaviour of rock from lower to very high confining pressures. The criteria have unique yield surfaces. The yield surface changes its shape with the change in the mean stress. It is observed beyond certain value of the mean stress; the yield surfaces converge to von-Mises yield surface which means the shape of the yield surface is independent of pressure beyond the certain value of mean normal stress. The criteria require three parameters that can be easily calculated from the triaxial compression test results. The proposed criteria also satisfy the Drucker stability postulate, hence could be adopted as a plastic potential function. For the assessment of the criteria, true-triaxial data from twelve rocks are considered. Results of the criteria are compared with the modified Mohr–Coulomb criteria both 2D and 3D proposed by Singh et al. (Int J Rock Mech Min Sci 48(4):546–555, 2011). Performance of the new failure criteria for the considered rocks are observed to be better than the modified Mohr–Coulomb criteria (2D and 3D).