Modeling rock fragmentation by coupling Voronoi diagram and discretized virtual internal bond
Sai Liu, Zhennan Zhang
Abstract
The rock fragmentation involves the inter-block and the intra-block fracture. A simulation method for rock fragmentation is developed by coupling Voronoi diagram (VD) and discretized virtual internal bond (DVIB). The DVIB is a lattice model that consists of bonds. The VD is used to generate the potential block structure in the DVIB mesh. Each potential block may contain any number of bond cells. To characterize the inter-block fracture, a hyperelastic bond potential is employed for the bond cells that are cut by the VD edges. While to characterize the intra-block fracture, an elastobrittle bond potential is adopted for the bonds in a block. By this method, both the inter-block and intra-block fracture can be well simulated. The simulation results suggest that this method is a simple and efficient approach to rock fragmentation simulation with block smash.