Three-Dimensional Energy-Driven Cellular Automata Method for Simulation of Energy Evolution in Rock Materials Under Uniaxial Compression

Analyzing the energy evolution of rock under uniaxial compression is crucial for understanding the mechanics of rock failure. Previous studies have investigated the changes in different energy components during cyclic loading and unloading uniaxial compression strength (CLU-UCS) tests by applying multiple loading and unloading cycles at various stress levels. However, increasing the number of cycles in CLU-UCS tests for energy evolution analysis may cause cumulative damage to rock specimens. Although several numerical simulation methods have been applied in recent years to analyze energy evolution of rock, they typically require high computational costs. To accurately and efficiently capture the energy evolution under uniaxial compression, a three-dimensional energy-driven cellular automata (EDCA3D) method has been proposed in this study. This EDCA3D method can effectively track the evolution of elastic strain energy, plastic strain energy, dissipated energy, and released energy throughout the rock failure process under uniaxial compression based on a single loading stress–strain curve. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, an EDCA3D model is developed to simulate the energy evolution of granite specimens. The results show that the simulated energy evolution aligns well with observations from CLU-UCS tests.