Numerical and physical modeling The 3D numerical study on growth and coalescence of pre-existing flaws in rock-like materials subjected to compressive loads

The Finite Element Method (FEM) is a very common numerical method used to investigate crack growth and coalescence. Liang et al. (2012) developed and applied the finite element code of Rock Failure Process Analysis (RFPA3D) to investigate initiation and propagation of a 3D surface flaw in rock materials under uniaxial compression. However, when crack propagation and coalescence are involved, remeshing is inevitable which makes FEM almost impossible to simulate arbitrary crack growth problems (Bouchard et al., 2000; Liang et al., 2012; Paluszny and Matthai, 2009; Wu and Wong, 2012).