Acoustic emission (AE) characterization is an effective technique to indirectly capture the progressive failure process of the brittle rock. In previous studies, both the experiment and numerical simulation were adopted to investigate AE characteristics of the brittle rock. However, as the most popular numerical model, the moment tensor model (MTM) did not reproduce the monitoring and analyzing manner of AE signals from the physical experiment. Consequently, its result could not be constrained by the experimental result. It is thus necessary to evaluate the consistency and compatibility between the experiment and MTM. To fulfill this, we developed a particle-velocity-based model (PVBM) which enabled directly monitor and analyze the particle velocity in the numerical model and had good robustness. The PVBM imitated the actual experiment and could fill in gaps between the experiment and MTM. AE experiments of Marine shale under uniaxial compression were carried out, of which results were simulated by MTM. In general, the variation trend of the experimental result could be presented by MTM. Nevertheless, magnitudes of AE parameters by MTM presented notable differences with more than several orders compared with those by the experiment. We sequentially used PVBM as a proxy to analyze these discrepancies quantitatively and make a systematical evaluation on AE characterization of brittle rocks from the experiment to numerical simulation, considering the influence of wave reflection, energy geometrical diffusion, viscous attenuation, particle size as well as progressive deterioration of rock material. It was suggested that only the combination of MTM and PVBM could reasonably and accurately acquire AE characteristics of the actual AE experiment of brittle rocks by making full use of their respective advantages.
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