ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Geotechnical Engineering
Mechanical Behavior and Acoustic Emission Evolution of Cracked Red Sandstone under Uniaxial Compression
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jiangxi Provincial Key Laboratory of Highway Bridge and Tunnel Engineering & Jiangxi Communications Investment Maintenance Technology Group Co., Ltd, Nanchang, China
- 2Jiangxi Communications Investment Group Co.Ltd, Nanchang, China
- 3Engineering Research Centre of Diagnosis Technology of Hydro-Construction, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing, China
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The analysis of fracture morphology has an important influence on the study of rock mechanical properties and crack propagation behavior. A series of uniaxial compression tests and acoustic emission (AE) tests were conducted on red sandstone specimens with different crack forms and crack inclination angles (15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 75°). The results show that: 1) The uniaxial peak strength and elastic modulus are significantly affected by crack form, showing a decreasing trend from single to double crack specimens, whereas the peak strain is less influenced. 2) The AE counts and cumulative AE counts exhibit distinct surge characteristics during the yielding and post-peak failure stages. For single crack specimens, the cumulative ringing counts consistently show steep “rising step” increases, whereas for double crack specimens, the number of steps decreases progressively, accompanied by marked increases in both steepness and amplitude. 3) Analysis of the failure modes reveals that, with increasing crack inclination angles, single crack specimens predominantly undergo shear–tensile mixed failure, whereas double crack specimens progressively evolve from shear tensile mixed failure to tensile failure.
Keywords: rock mechanics, acoustic emission, Fracture classification, RA-AF analysis, Uniaxial compression;
Received: 25 Sep 2025; Accepted: 18 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rong, Liu, Peng, Sun and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jinzhi Liu, jxjt_liujinzhi@163.com
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