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Abstract A new numerical method，the numerical manifold，has been used in many fields and was seldom applied to the fracture propagation of fractured rock mass under multi-field coupling. The control equations of thermo-mechanical coupling were established considering the influence of temperature on materials and based on the linear elastic theory of thermodynamics. The method of numerical manifold with the temperature and the covering function of displacements as basic unknowns，the weighted average and the arithmetic mean as the solution algorithm of average temperature，the modified Mohr-Coulomb equation as the criterion of fracture propagation of rock mass，the physical cover as the basic element of fracture propagation，was presented for simulating coupled thermo-mechanical process and fracture propagation under coupled actions. The numerical manifold method has two kinds of covers，namely the mathematical cover and the physical cover. The mathematical cover is independent of the physical domain of the problem；and its generation will not consider the number，position and orientation of the fractures，which avoids the inconvenience of mesh generation on fractured areas during the process of fracture propagation. Therefore，the proposed method is effective for simulating the processes of coupling behavior and fracture propagation. Finally，a numerical case study was conducted with the program written with MATLAB，so as to demonstrate the feasibility and soundness of the proposed method in handling the fracture propagation and coupled problems of fractured rock mass.
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Received: 16 July 2013
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2014, Vol. 33 
