Numerical analysis of the effects of vesicle distribution characteristics on the engineering properties of volcanic rocks

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.