Based on the co-rotational formulation to deal with large displacements and rotations of a solid, we propose a method of numerical simulations of rock slope failure involving dynamic frictional-contact behavior. In order to simulate failure process of a rock slope subjected to external loading such as an earthquake, we divide the phenomena into multiple stages. The proposed method enables us to represent all of these deformation and failure stages in a continuous fashion. Some simple numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed method to simulate multi-stage failure processes.
In order to simulate failure process of a discontinuous rock slope subjected to external loading such as an earthquake, we divide the phenomena into multiple stages. The stages we are concerned with in this study are the following four:
- At the first stage: a slope deforms in response to dynamic or static excitations.
- At the second stage: the material is degraded due to micro-cracks distributed in the rock. These micro-cracks gradually evolve and increase in size, so that the load-carrying capacity is reduced.
- At the third stage: the slope collapses and breaks into many segments. Several sets of segments start to move dynamically.
- At the fourth stage: moving segments contact each other and some of them break up into several blocks. These blocks act as new external force against other structures.
The proposed method is designed to simulate all of these deformation and failure stages in a continuous fashion. In this study, we try to simulate the collapse of a slope involving collision followed by segmentation by cracking. In order to represent dynamic frictional contact with large rotations after the crack propagation, we incorporate the effects of dynamics, gluing, and contact within the framework of the co-rotational theory.
