Invariant kinetic approach to the description of a rock fracture process and induced seismic events

Powerful seismic events, such as earthquakes and rockbursts, are caused by the accumulation of energy in rocks and loss of rock mass stability. Usually methods of their forecasting are based on the registration of anomalous behavior of geophysical fields. However an efficiency of this approach is low. The present paper proposes a kinetic approach to the description of rock fracture process, which can be used for the forecasting of seismic events and an investigation of structure and energy distributions in rock. 3-D and 1-D kinetic equations describing a process of cluster formation in rock were obtained. The equations are invariant to deformation conditions and to the scale level of events. They showed a good agreement with the results of field observations and laboratory experiments. It was also shown that these equations well describe the processes of earthquake, rockburst and rock sample failure preparation. Catalogues of rockbursts in mines were analyzed with the use of the kinetic equations to find out evidence of induced seismic events. The proposed approach makes it possible to reveal trends in rock behavior and thus predict the rock failure at different scale levels.