Study on Failure Characteristics and Acoustic Emission Laws of Rock-like Specimens under Uniaxial Compression

Complex underground conditions make it challenging to conduct extensive coring, and it is difficult for laboratories to carry out a large number of rock mechanics experiments due to the limited number of cores. Rock-like specimens are commonly used in the laboratory to replace coal-rock specimens. In this paper, rock-like specimens with different proportions are produced to study the mechanical properties, failure characteristics, and acoustic emission laws of rock-like specimens under uniaxial compression. The results show that when the rock-like specimen does not contain gypsum, the stress of the specimen decreases rapidly after reaching the peak stress, which is similar to the mechanical properties of hard brittle rock. When the rock-like specimen contains gypsum, the stress of the specimen decreases slowly after reaching the compressive limit, and the failure of the specimen is gentle, which is similar to the mechanical properties of soft rock. When the specimen lacks gypsum, the strength of the rock-like specimen is larger, and the strength of the specimen is positively correlated with the proportion of cement. When the specimen contains gypsum, the strength of the rock-like specimen decreases sharply, and the strength of the rock-like specimen is negatively correlated with the proportion of gypsum. The maximum acoustic emission ringing count increases with higher cement content but decreases with increased gypsum content. The cumulative count change of acoustic emissions approximately underwent four stages, aligning well with the four stages of uniaxial compression failure observed in typical rock. The research results have important reference value for the selection of rock-like materials to replace the original rock materials for laboratory research.