Abstract
It has been found that the physical and mechanical properties of rockfill materials deteriorate when subjected to wetting–drying cycles. Previous studies have mainly focused on the variations of mechanical properties of rockfill materials with wetting–drying cycles. However, the effects of wetting–drying cycles on the breakage characteristics of rock grains still remain unclear. In this study, we perform extensive single grain crushing tests on slate rock grains that have suffered from different wetting–drying cycles. We then investigate the effects of cyclic wetting–drying on the crushing strength, fracture energy, and fragment size distribution of slate rock grains. The results show that both the crushing strength and fracture energy per volume decrease exponentially with increasing wetting–drying cycles, indicating that the deterioration of the mechanical properties of slate grains gradually slows down. The size of fragments follows a fractal distribution, and the fractal dimension shows a linear relationship with the number of wetting–drying cycles, suggesting more small fragments for highly deteriorated rock grains. SEM scanning indicates that the micropores and cracks expand due to wetting–drying cycles. An X-ray diffraction analysis shows that the mineral composition content of slate grains changes after wetting–drying cycles.
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Abbreviations
- \(P_{\text{s}}\) :
-
The survival probability of a grain
- \(\sigma_{\text{0}}\) :
-
The characteristic strength at which 37% of grains survive (MPa)
- \(d\) :
-
The grain size (mm)
- \(d_{\text{0}}\) :
-
The reference grain size (mm)
- \(N\) :
-
The number of wetting–drying cycles
- \(i\) :
-
The rank in ascending order
- \(m\) :
-
The weibull modulus
- \(E_{{\text{f}}}\) :
-
The energy input by the external load (kJ)
- \(\delta_{{\text{f}}}\) :
-
The loading displacement (mm)
- \(F\) :
-
The external load (n)
- \(E\) :
-
The fracture energy of a grain (kJ)
- \(V\) :
-
The volume of a grain (m3)
- \(\langle {E \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {E V}} \right. \kern-\nulldelimiterspace} V}\rangle\) :
-
The mean fracture energy per unit volume (kJ/m3)
- \(M\) :
-
The mass of a grain (g)
- \(S\) :
-
The shape factor of a grain
- \(\rho\) :
-
The unit mass
- \(D\) :
-
The fractal dimension of the grain size distribution
- \(N\left( d \right)\) :
-
The number of fragments with size larger than d
- \(M\left( d \right)\) :
-
The cumulative mass of the fragments with size larger than d
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 51825905, U1865204) and the YaLong River Hydropower Development Company, Ltd. (Grant no. 0023-20XJ0011). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM, Zeiss SIGMA) in this paper was performed at the Testing Center of Wuhan University.
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Zhou, W., Cheng, J., Zhang, G. et al. Effects of Wetting–Drying Cycles on the Breakage Characteristics of Slate Rock Grains. Rock Mech Rock Eng 54, 6323–6337 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-021-02618-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-021-02618-5