Advances in Rock Fracture and Damage Mechanics over Multiple Scales

Dear Colleagues,

Rock fracture and damage mechanics are central to evaluating the stability, permeability, integrity, and service life of underground and surface engineering systems. Because natural rocks contain pores, grains, mineral interfaces, bedding planes, joints, and inherited defects, their failure involves interacting processes across multiple scales, from microcrack nucleation and process-zone development to crack branching, coalescence, localization, and dynamic instability. These mechanisms are influenced by loading rate, confinement, temperature, fluids, chemical reactions, cyclic loading, and coupled environmental conditions.

This Special Issue welcomes theoretical, experimental, numerical, and data-driven studies of fracture and damage in rocks, rock-forming minerals, and well-characterized rock-like materials. Topics include multiscale and microstructurally informed fracture; advanced imaging, acoustic emission, and full-field measurement; constitutive, discrete, phase-field, peridynamic, and hybrid modeling; inverse analysis, machine learning, digital twins, and uncertainty quantification; and hydro-mechanical, thermo-mechanical, and chemo-mechanical coupling. Particular interest is given to research that links measurable physical evidence with fracture descriptors, model predictions, or engineering decisions, while clearly defining material context, loading conditions, resolution, validation procedures, and evidentiary limits. Studies addressing scale transitions, competing mechanisms, and independent model validation are especially encouraged. Applications include tunneling, mining, rockbursts, hydraulic fracturing, geothermal stimulation, subsurface energy and carbon storage, nuclear-waste repositories, slope stability, blasting, and infrastructure durability.

Dr. Zhendong Cui
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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