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Failure Characteristics of Obliqued-layers Shale Specimens from Experimental Observation

  • Research Article-Civil Engineering
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Abstract

Understanding the cracking characteristics of shale is necessary for oil and gas exploitation engineering. The cracking behaviours and failure modes of obliqued-layers shale specimens were studied under uniaxial compression stress. The acoustic emission response was monitored, and the displacement and strain fields were calculated with digital image correlation (DIC). For the flawed shale specimens, the cracks initiated from the flaw tips most of the time and propagated towards the boundaries, and bedding layers led to the branching and diversion of the crack path. The first cracks did not always start from the flaw tips due to microstructure distribution. Tensile cracks dominated the cracking process, and shear cracks mainly contributed to the final failure of the flawed shale specimens. The failure modes remained unchanged when the flaw rotated from 30° to 60°. However, shear cracks along the bedding layers and tensile cracks parallel to the maximum principal stress dominated the failure of the intact shale specimen. The flaw controlled the location of cracking initiation, and the bedding layers affected the cracking path for the flawed specimen. The bedding layers also control the failure mode of the intact specimen. The experimental results contribute to the understanding of cracking properties in layered anisotropic materials.

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Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge the projects (51008319, 51779021) supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the open project (LNTCCMA-20200103) from Key Laboratory of New Technology for Construction of Cities in Mountain Area.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400040, China

    Yu-xin Ban, Qiang Xie & Jun Duan

  2. College of River and Ocean Engineering, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing, 400074, China

    Xiang Fu

  3. Key Laboratory of New Technology for Construction of Cities in Mountain Area Chongqing University, Ministry of Education, Chongqing, 400040, China

    Qiang Xie

  4. School of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor, Bahru, Johor, Malaysia

    Rini Asnida Abdullah

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  1. Yu-xin Ban
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Correspondence to Qiang Xie.

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Data Availability Statement

The mechanical data and original used during the study are available from the corresponding author by appropriate request.

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Ban, Yx., Fu, X., Xie, Q. et al. Failure Characteristics of Obliqued-layers Shale Specimens from Experimental Observation. Arab J Sci Eng 46, 10757–10770 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-021-05538-2

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