Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering最新文献

Underground space creation and energy extraction, which induce unloading on rock fractures, commonly occur in various rock engineering projects, and rock engineering projects are subjected to high temperatures with increasing depth. Fluid flow behavior of rock fractures is a critical issue in many subsurface rock engineering projects. Previous studies have extensively considered permeability evolution in rock fractures under loading phase, whereas changes in fracture permeability under unloading phase have not been fully understood. To examine the unloading-induced changes in fracture permeability under different temperatures, we performed water flow-through tests on fractured rock samples subjected to decreasing confining pressures and different temperatures. The experimental results show that the permeability of fracture increases with unloading of confining pressure but decreases with loading-unloading cycles. Temperature may affect fracture permeability when it is higher than a certain threshold. An empirical model of fracture hydraulic aperture including two material parameters of initial normal stiffness and maximum normal closure can well describe the permeability changes in rough rock fracture subjected to loading-unloading cycles and heating. A coupled thermo-mechanical model considering asperity damage is finally used to understand the influences of stress paths and temperatures on fracture permeability.

Vesicles can be of different sizes and shapes and can be randomly distributed within vesicular volcanic rocks. This study investigates the variation of engineering properties of vesicular rocks due to the changes in vesicle distribution characteristics for different cases of bulk porosity and vesicle diameter using a systematic numerical simulation program using the finite element method-based rock failure process analysis (RFPA) software. Models with uniform-size vesicles and combinations of different proportions of different-sized vesicles were considered to resemble natural vesicular rocks more closely, and ten different random vesicle distributions were tested for each case. Increasing bulk porosity decreased the uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) and elastic modulus of the specimens, and the specimens with the lowest bulk porosity showed the greatest range of UCS values in the case of uniform-size vesicles. The effect of vesicle diameter on UCS showed an unsystematic response which was understood to be a result of different vesicle distribution patterns, some of which facilitated a shear failure. Specimens with multiple-size vesicles in different proportions revealed that the variation of UCS due to vesicle distribution characteristics is minimum when the bulk porosity is equally shared by different size vesicles. In addition, when the proportion of smaller-sized vesicles is higher, UCS showed an increase compared to that of the equal proportion of different size vesicles case at low porosities, but a decrease at higher porosities. Variation of elastic modulus showed minor, unsystematic fluctuations as a function of vesicle diameter and different proportions of different-sized vesicles, and the range for different vesicle distribution patterns was narrow in general. Overall, the findings of this study recommend cautious use of the engineering properties determined through a limited number of laboratory tests on vesicular rocks.