Influences of the Height to Diameter Ratio on the Failure Characteristics of Marble under Unloading Conditions
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 20, Issue 9
Abstract
Failure characteristics of rocks under different loading and unloading conditions have been an important subject of laboratory tests. This study aims to investigate the influence of the height to diameter (H/D) ratio on the failure characteristics of marble specimens under unloading conditions. Conventional triaxial unloading (TU) tests were performed on marble specimens of 50 mm diameter with different H/D ratios from 0.5 to 3.0. Moreover, for comparison, uniaxial compression (UC) tests and conventional triaxial compression (TC) tests were conducted on marble specimens with different H/D ratios. The results indicate that the failure strengths of the specimens, including the UC strength, TC strength, and TU strength decrease with the increase in specimen height, and the decreasing trend can be fitted with a function that is deduced from Weibull's theory. The specimens with lower H/D ratios (0.5 and 1.0) underwent tensile failures in the TU tests, whereas the specimens with higher H/D ratios (2.0 and 3.0) showed shear failures in the TU tests. In addition, the analyses of strain energy evolutions indicate that the unloading failures of the specimens with lower H/D ratios are an ongoing process and the unloading failures of the specimens with higher H/D ratios present a sudden process.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are sincerely grateful to Professor Maurice B. Dusseault and his wife Betty Anne Dusseault (Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Canada), for their thoughtful review and English help of this paper. This paper was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41630642).
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International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 20 • Issue 9 • September 2020
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© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 17, 2019
Accepted: Mar 24, 2020
Published online: Jun 18, 2020
Published in print: Sep 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Nov 18, 2020
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