Active Seismic Monitoring of Crack Initiation, Propagation, and Coalescence in Rock

Active seismic monitoring was used to detect and characterize crack initiation, crack propagation and crack coalescence in pre-cracked rock specimens. Uniaxial compression tests were conducted on Indiana limestone specimens with two parallel pre-existing cracks. During the experiments, the mechanically induced cracks around the flaw tips were monitored by measuring surface displacements using digital image correlation (DIC). Transmitted and...