Permeability Evolution and Rock Brittle Failure

This paper reports an experimental study of the evolution of permeability during rock brittle failure and a theoretical analysis of rock critical stress level. It is assumed that the rock is a strain-softening medium whose strength can be described by Weibull’s distribution. Based on the two-dimensional renormalization group theory, it is found that the stress level λc (the ratio of the stress at the critical point to the peak stress) depends...