Abstract
Stone cultural relics witness China’s extensive history and serve as an essential carrier of Chinese spiritual civilization. However, over time, these stone artifacts have suffered various degrees of damage, making strengthening their protection an urgent issue. This paper focuses on the sandstone carriers of stone cultural relics. It uses the numerical simulation software RFPA to create specimen models under different working conditions based on the mechanical parameters of this sandstone. These models undergo uniaxial compression simulation, where the different conditions include specimens with no cracks, a single crack, multiple primary and secondary cross-cracks, and multiple equal-length cross-cracks to investigate the failure characteristics of the sandstone under these conditions. The study reveals that specimens with cracks have significantly lower strength than intact specimens, with the primary crack having a more significant impact on the strength of the cracked specimens. The effect of crack length on the stress at which cracking begins and the stress at which damage occurs is stronger than the effect of the number of cracks. As the length increases, both the stress at which cracking begins and the stress at which damage occurs decrease. The initiation point of crack propagation is related to the distribution and length of cracks, starting at the ends of the primary crack in specimens with primary and secondary cross-cracks and the vertical crack or the ends nearest to the vertical crack in specimens with equal-length cross-cracks. In the acoustic emission parameter curve, sudden increases in acoustic emission ring count and energy, along with inflection points in the cumulative ring count and energy curves, indicate the imminent crack of the rock. The findings of this study have significant theoretical and practical implications for the research on the protection of stone cultural relics.