Micromechanical analysis of anisotropic damage and its influence on effective thermal conductivity in brittle rocks

The micromechanical damage mechanisms induced by coupled thermal and mechanical loadings and their impacts on the evolution of the effective thermal conductivity of brittle rocks are formulated in this study with a homogenization scheme based on the Eshelby solution. The recovery of degraded stiffness due to normal closure of closed microcracks is modeled with an empirical hyperbolic relation between normal deformation and local normal stress....