Design Improvements for a True Triaxial Cell to Monitor Initiation and Propagation of Damage and Body Cracks during Testing

Understanding damage and body crack initiation and propagation in rocks subjected to three-dimensional (3D) stress regimes is of fundamental importance for designing stable mining and civil engineering structures, scheduling and maintaining safe mining operations and for other applications such as hydraulic fracturing of rocks. Most studies on this topic focus on numerical modeling and involve many assumptions and simplifications. Currently, the results from the numerical modeling cannot be validated against laboratory studies due to lack of data on damage and body crack initiation and propagation in rocks subjected to conventional and true triaxial compression tests.