Experimental Investigation on the Effect of Water Saturation on the Failure Mechanism and Acoustic Emission Characteristics of Sandstone
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 24, Issue 6
Abstract
In-depth investigations into the effect of water saturation on the damage and failure mechanisms of rock have significance for analyzing the stability of the surrounding rock in water-rich rock masses. Uniaxial compression tests were carried out on two types of sandstone to explore the influence and mechanism of water saturation on their strength and deformation, stress thresholds, energy evolution, and acoustic emission (AE) characteristics. The deduced the following after water saturation: (1) water saturation had an obvious softening effect on both types of sandstone, manifested by a reduction in uniaxial compressive strength and elastic modulus, and an increase in the Poisson’s ratio; (2) the normalized crack initiation stress (σci/σf) increased and the normalized crack damage stress (σcd/σf) decreased; (3) the total energy (U), elastic energy (Ue), and dissipated energy (Ud) at the peak strength decreased and the ratio of elastic energy to total energy (Ue/U) decreased; and (4) the peak values of AE count and AE cumulative count decreased in both types of sandstone. Based on our analysis of the AE b-values, the proportion of small-scale ruptures increased. An analysis based on the AE ratio of the rise time to amplitude (RA) value and average frequency (AF) value showed that the proportion of shear fracture increased after water saturation. Our findings provide an indication of the significance of determining the failure mechanism of water-saturated rocks.
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Data Availability Statement
The data sets generated during and/or analyzed in the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant Nos. 51709113, 51704097), the Key Research and Development Program of Henan Province, China (Grant No. 222102320141), and the Science Foundation of Henan Polytechnic University (Grant Nos. AQ20230727, J2021-2). The authors are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments, which greatly improved this paper.
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International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 24 • Issue 6 • June 2024
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© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Oct 19, 2022
Accepted: Dec 15, 2023
Published online: Apr 3, 2024
Published in print: Jun 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Sep 3, 2024
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