Abstract
Increasing the deeper understanding of the thermal damages and failure mechanisms of sandstone undergoing thermal treatments at different temperatures is a key concern for deep-mining and underground coal gasification processes. In this research study, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) apparatus, JSM-5410LV, which was equipped with a built-in digital electro-hydraulic servo loading system, was applied to carry out a series of three-point bending tests on Pingdingshan sandstone following heat treatments at elevated and high temperatures ranging from 25 to 600 °C. The subcritical crack initiation load, peak load, and elastic modulus were found to increase with the increases in the thermal treatment temperatures until a maximum was achieved at 125 °C, after which decreases were observed. However, it should be noted that there were sudden drops observed for the specimens after the thermal treatment temperature reached 150 °C due to the thermal diffusivity of the cement. The subcritical crack growth length was theoretically calculated, and a digital speckle correlation method (DSCM) was applied to verify the initial load and subcritical crack growth length. It was found that the fracture toughness fluctuated significantly when the thermal treatment temperature ranged from 25 to 125 °C, and reached a peak of 47.45 MPa mm0.5. It was also observed that, as the temperature was raised from 175 to 600 °C, the fracture toughness gradually decreased. The subcritical crack growth mode was determined to be intra-granular cracking following the thermal treatments below 125 °C, while a mixture of intra-granular and trans-granular cracking occurred in the specimens which experienced thermal treatments of 175 °C. The relationship between heat treatment temperature and subcritical crack growth was derived, which could be used to develop geothermal energy extraction from the critical temperature resources.
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Abbreviations
- \(\delta\) :
-
Displacement of sandstone (L)
- \({\delta _{{\text{cr}}}}\) :
-
Displacement in the absence of notch (L)
- \({\delta _{{\text{nc}}}}\) :
-
Additional displacement due to presence of notch (L)
- \(a\) :
-
Crack length before the peak (L)
- \({a_0}\) :
-
Length of prefabricated notch (L)
- \({a_{\text{c}}}\) :
-
Subcritical crack growth length (L)
- \(b\) :
-
Width of the specimen (L)
- \({C_{\text{n}}}\) :
-
Correlative degree between two grey sets of the same pixel
- \(E\) :
-
Elastic modulus (M L−1 T−2)
- \(h\) :
-
Height of specimen (L)
- \(K\) :
-
Slope of the load–deflection curve from 30 to 70% of the peak load
- \({K_{{\text{IC}}}}\) :
-
Fracture toughness (M L−1.5 T−2)
- \(K_{{{\text{IC}}}}^{{{\text{ini}}}}\) :
-
Initial fracture toughness (M L−1.5 T−2)
- \(K_{{{\text{IC}}}}^{{{\text{um}}}}\) :
-
Unstable fracture toughness (M L−1.5 T−2)
- \(l\) :
-
Effective span (L)
- \(P\) :
-
Load (M L T−2)
- \({P_{{\text{ini}}}}\) :
-
Crack initiation load (M L T− 2)
- \({P_{\hbox{max} }}\) :
-
Peak load (M L T− 2)
- \({P_{{\text{um}}}}\) :
-
Subcritical crack initiation load (M L T− 2)
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11572343, 51622404), Yueqi outstanding scholar Award Program by CUMTB, the State Key Research Development Program of China (2016YFC0801404) and Outstanding Young Talents of “Ten Thousand People Plan”.
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Zuo, J., Li, Y., Zhang, X. et al. The effects of thermal treatments on the subcritical crack growth of Pingdingshan sandstone at elevated high temperatures. Rock Mech Rock Eng 51, 3439–3454 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-018-1527-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-018-1527-9