Brittle failure in heterogeneous crystalline rocks

In a novel attempt to go further in details of the brittle failure process, an extensive study covering both experimental and numerical aspects, has been performed at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Dental plaster has been selected as the base model material to simulate the natural conditions. The specimens were tested in biaxial loading condition after proper curing. To numerically simulate the problem, the UDEC software was used and the effect of geometrical heterogeneity has been studied. A failure criterion is proposed based upon this study.