With the development of the trend "marching deep into the earth" around the world, there is now more deep engineering such as deep-buried traffic tunnels, deep hydropower buildings or diversion tunnels, deep mining, and so on. In the deep engineering construction process, rock brittle fracture is the failure phenomenon of deep rock mass. Rock fracture is induced by human engineering construction such as deep underground space utilization and deep resource exploitation. It is the most typical deep engineering geological disaster.

Rock brittle fracture disasters have been encountered in tunnel projects and hard rock mines in more than 20 countries, such as China, Poland, Canada, the United States, Australia, and Switzerland. When rock brittle fracture occurs, it shows the phenomenon of dynamic failure of deep surrounding rock, which has great abruptness, randomness, and uncertainty in time and space. After the occurrence, it often causes casualties and equipment damage, and the consequences are very serious, even causing earthquakes. However, the inducing mechanism and mathematical constitutive models of rock fracture are very complex, which is still a worldwide scientific problem in the field of deep engineering and rock mechanics. In light of this, an increasing number of researchers and engineers are paying attention to this problem and have carried out a lot of research work from the aspects of occurrence mechanism, mathematical model analysis, monitoring, early warning, and controlling.

This Special Issue aims to highlight the latest research on the mathematical theories of rock fracture mechanism, constitutive models, cutting-edge engineering cases and solutions. We welcome both original research and review articles.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Mathematical analysis of rock fracture in deep underground engineering
• Prediction and early warning technology for rock fracture disaster
• Controlling and reinforcement of deep rock mass
• Advanced mathematical theories of rock fracture disaster
• Innovative numerical simulation methods of rock fracture
• Laboratory rock fracture experiments and theoretical analysis
• Constitutive models of geological bodies under complex deep environments