Damage deterioration mechanism and damage constitutive modelling of red sandstone under cyclic thermal-cooling treatments

In the process of exploiting mineral and geothermal energy resources, the influence of the cyclic heat effect on the mechanical properties of the surrounding rock becomes increasingly prominent. To further study the damage deterioration mechanism, deformation and failure characteristics of cyclic heating–cooling (H–C) of the rock, cyclic H–C treatment tests and uniaxial compression tests were conducted, acoustic emission (AE) events were monitored, and the mesoscale characteristics of the fracture surface were imaged and analysed. The results show that the number of H–C cycles played an important role in the evolutions of the strength, cumulative damage variables and deformation modulus of the red sandstone. The peak strength of the specimens decreased with the increase in the number of H–C cycles, and the damage variables increased with the number of H–C cycles. The cyclic H–C treatments promoted the development of microcracks and the growth of the stress–strain curve crack closure stage. Both the crack closure stress and crack closure strain increased with the number of H–C cycles. Furthermore, both the number of transgranular microcracks and the microcrack spacing increased during cyclic H–C treatment, which also led to the failure mode of the specimens gradually changing from shear failure to splitting failure. In addition, based on the principle of strain equivalence, a damage constitutive model under the coupling action of cyclic H–C treatment and loading was deduced. The crack closure deformation of specimens treated with different numbers of H–C cycles was well reflected by the proposed model, and the prediction of other mechanical parameters, such as the peak stress, peak strain and tangent modulus of the theoretical curves, was also verified by test data.

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Opracowanie rekordu ze środków MEiN, umowa nr SONP/SP/546092/2022 w ramach programu "Społeczna odpowiedzialność nauki" - moduł: Popularyzacja nauki i promocja sportu (2022-2023)