Effects of bedding plane properties on mechanical, acoustic emission and micro failure characteristics of bedded rock mass

To study the effects of bedding plane properties on the mechanical, acoustic emission and micro failure characteristics of bedded rock mass, uniaxial compression tests of bedded rock mass with different bedding plane angles were first conducted. Based on PFC3D software, the effects of bedding plane strength and roughness on the mechanical and micro failure characteristics of bedded rock mass were then investigated. The laboratory test results showed that when the failure pattern was single crack type dominant, AE counts and AE energy curves belonged to the unimodal distribution. The AE counts and AE energy curves belonged to the multimodal distribution when the failure pattern was mixed failure. Uniaxial compression strength almost increased linearly with the increasing average amplitude. Therefore, acoustic emission characteristic parameters can be used to characterize the mechanical and failure characteristics of bedded rock mass. The numerical simulation results revealed that both bedding plane strength and roughness showed strong influences on uniaxial compression strength, failure pattern and micro cracks’ proportion of bedded rock mass.