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Updated: Apr 17, 2026

Stress Distribution During Cold Compression of Rocks and Mineral Aggregates Using Synchrotron-based X-Ray Diffraction
Published on: May 20, 2018
Couple stresses and the fracture of rock
Colin Atkinson1, Ciprian D Coman2, Javier Aldazabal3
1Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK Schlumberger Gould Research Center, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge, UK c.atkinson@imperial.ac.uk.
Abstract:
An assessment is made here of the role played by the micropolar continuum theory on the cracked Brazilian disc test used for determining rock fracture toughness. By analytically solving the corresponding mixed boundary-value problems and employing singular-perturbation arguments, we provide closed-form expressions for the energy release rate and the corresponding stress-intensity factors for both mode I and mode II loading. These theoretical results are augmented by a set of fracture toughness experiments on both sandstone and marble rocks. It is further shown that the morphology of the fracturing process in our centrally pre-cracked circular samples correlates very well with discrete element simulations.
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