On tensile fracture of a brittle rock

Three-point bending experiments were performed to observe mode-I fracture in a series of geometrically similar, center-notched rectangular beams composed of Sioux quartzite, a stiff, hard rock with flexural tensile strength σt = 32 MPa. Acoustic emission (AE) were recorded and microcrack locations were determined to track crack growth. Digital image correlation (DIC) was used to augment the acoustic emission data. Detailed observations indicate...