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Mechanics of thermal spallation and fracturing of dry rocks produced by surface heating

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Abstract

This paper reports the results of thermal spallation experiments on specially dried shale samples with 3 bedding orientations (0°, 45° and 90°) under 3 flame temperatures (899 °C, 1243 °C and 1559 °C) and the 3D thermal elastic finite element modelling. Under open flame heating, continuous spallation is observed with ejection of various spalls and popping sounds. After a period of spallation, tensile fractures are formed in the samples and grow perpendicular to the heating surface, except for a sample with bedding orientation of 90° under the low temperature. Increasing flame temperature promotes ejection, popping sounds and spallation rate, but reduces the spallation starting time, spallation duration, depression diameter and depression depth. The model shows that heating induces compressive stress in the surface layer and tensile stresses beneath it. The tensile stress is found to be sufficient to generate large tensile fractures. The ratio between the induced compressive and tensile stresses increases with increasing spallation depth but little affected by the flame temperature. The spallation compressive stress increases with temperature from 29 to 51% of the uniaxial compressive strength. This stress is shown to be sufficient to cause buckling of thin layers separated from the bulk of the rock. The size of the buckling layer is smaller than the size of the spallation zone leading to a mosaic pattern seen on the surface after spallation. The results are important for further understanding of the mechanism of thermal spallation of rocks as well as large scale spallation-like processes in the Earth’s crust.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

YG thanks the China Scholarship Council for overseas study support (No. 202106370160). AVD and EP acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council through project DP210102224. We also want to thank Mr. Shili Li for his help on our experimental work and thank the UWA IT service for providing the calculating platform.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Resources and Safety Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China

    Yide Guo, Xibing Li & Linqi Huang

  2. Department of Civil, Environment and Mining Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, 6009, Australia

    Yide Guo & Arcady Dyskin

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, 6009, Australia

    Elena Pasternak

  4. International Space Centre, The University of Western Australia, Perth, 6009, Australia

    Yide Guo, Arcady Dyskin & Elena Pasternak

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  1. Yide Guo
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  2. Arcady Dyskin
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Correspondence to Yide Guo, Arcady Dyskin or Elena Pasternak.

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Guo, Y., Dyskin, A., Pasternak, E. et al. Mechanics of thermal spallation and fracturing of dry rocks produced by surface heating. Acta Geotech. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-024-02260-9

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