Anisotropic Permeability of Coal Subjected to Cyclic Loading and Unloading
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 18, Issue 8
Abstract
An experimental investigation on the anisotropic permeability of coal under cyclic loading and unloading conditions is presented in this article. The results show that coal permeability decreases with increasing hydrostatic stress. The relationship between coal permeability and applied stress was quantified using an improved power model. The cyclic loading and unloading were found to induce an irreversible permeability reduction, which tended to be diminished with increasing loading/unloading cycles. The anisotropic permeability of the studied coal is notable, and it was found to nonlinearly decrease with an increase of the angle between the direction of flow and the direction of bedding planes (θ). The relationship between permeability and θ can be quantified using an exponential model with an anisotropic parameter (λ). Several factors (e.g., loading cycles, stress) influencing the anisotropic permeability are discussed in this article.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Chinese Fundamental Research (973) Program through Grant 2015CB057906 and the partial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 51379200, 41572290, 41672281) and the Fundamental Research Funds of Shandong University (2017JC001).
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Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 18 • Issue 8 • August 2018
Copyright
© 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 18, 2017
Accepted: Mar 2, 2018
Published online: Jun 7, 2018
Published in print: Aug 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Nov 7, 2018
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