Software Products

The rock-cutting package supports creation and testing of a synthetic rock. The tests include standard rock-mechanics tests (direct tension and compression) and a rock-cutting test. The rock-cutting test supports both dry and wet cutting, during which up to two cutters are moved across the surface of the synthetic rock, while monitoring forces on the cutters, damage in the rock, and all energy quantities of the cutter-rock system. Wet cutting is modeled by applying a confining pressure to the evolving rock surface via the chaining algorithm. The chaining algorithm repeatedly identifies a connected chain of particles on the rock surface and applies an external force to each of these particles based on the local chain geometry and specified pressure.

The rock-cutting package is described in the first major section, which includes a description of wet cutting. Rock-cutting examples are given in the second major section. The first example serves as a base case to demonstrate system behavior during dry cutting under conditions of the SiPlan Base Case test. The rock is Torrey Buff sandstone, with a 200-mm grain size, which is sufficient to resolve the cutter chamfer, and a sample size sufficient to reach a steady-state condition. The second example performs both dry and wet cutting on the material with a grain size equal to that of Torrey Buff sandstone, with wet-cutting pressures of 1 and 5 MPa. The second example exercises the chaining algorithm to confirm that it is behaving in a robust and reasonable manner and provides a comparison of dry and wet cutting. It is demonstrated that the damage process during dry cutting is brittle, whereas the damage process during wet cutting is ductile.

The rock-cutting package (rcPkg9.N) is provided in the form of a consistent set of FISH functions that operate within PFC2D version 9 (where N is the package version number). The rock-cutting package is built upon the material modeling support package (Potyondy, 2025).

REFERENCES

Potyondy, D. (2026). Rock-cutting support for PFC [rcPkg9.1]. Itasca Consulting Group, Inc., unnumbered Technical Memorandum (August 10, 2026).

FILES

rcPkg9.1.zip [257 MB]

rcSupport[9.1].pdf [10 MB]

PACKAGE REVISIONS

Note: See rcPkg-publicMods.txt for previous version revisions.