THE DEVELOPMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF ROCK FAILURE IN THE IPE RAS SINCE THE FIRST HALF OF THE 1970S

Abstract

The paper presents a brief historical overview of laboratory experimental studies initiated at the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the first half of the 1970s on the initiative of academician M.A. Sadovsky and reproduced certain aspects of rock failure during the seismic process using models. The background and main directions of research are noted. Data on individual experiments are presented, the main attention is focused on the methodology. The basic information about a large-scale experiment on deformation and destruction of blocks of rocks of meter size on a 50-ton press is given. The experiment was conducted in the 1980s under the methodological and organizational guidance of the IPE RAS (Sobolev G.A.) with the involvement of a wide range of related organizations and specialists. The methodology and results of experiments on the seismic gap model, experiments on slider models of faults with trigger initiation and experiments on small samples with a complex stress state are described. The experimental results supported the main ideas of the avalanche-unstable fracturing formation model proposed at the IPE RAS in 1971.