Fractional-Order Constitutive Modeling of Shear Creep Damage in Carbonaceous Mud Shale: Experimental Verification of Acoustic Emission Ringing Count Rate Analysis

To reveal the influence mechanism of shear creep behavior of the weak interlayer (carbonaceous mud shale) from a microscopic perspective, acoustic emission (AE) technology was introduced to conduct shear creep tests to capture micro-fracture acoustic signals and analyze the microscopic damage evolution laws. The results indicate that, as normal stress increased, shear creep strain decayed exponentially, while the steady state creep rate increased gradually. Additionally, the peak value and cumulative value of the AE ringing count rate also increased gradually. The AE b-value had a staged pattern of “fluctuation adjustment → stable increase → abrupt decline”. The sudden drop in the b-value could serve as a precursor feature of creep failure. The higher the normal stress, the earlier the sudden drop in b-value and the larger the Δb value. The damage variable was defined based on the AE ringing count rate, and a new creep damage model was constructed by combining fractional-order theory. The model can uniformly describe the creep damage law of carbonaceous mud shale under different normal stresses. The reliability of the model was verified through experimental data. The research results provide a theoretical basis for long-term stability analysis of mine slopes containing weak interlayers.