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Effect of confining pressure on deformation and strength of granite in confined direct tension tests

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Abstract

To investigate the effect of confining pressure on tensile deformation and strength of rocks, a series of confined direct tension tests (CDTT) were conducted on cylindrical granite samples. The results indicate that the deformation/damage process contains the initial micro-crack opening stage and elastic deformation stage. The axial peak strain, radial peak strain, volumetric peak strain, elastic modulus, and Poisson’s ratio all increase with the increase of confining pressure. The strength envelope behaves an interesting “bulge” phenomenon, namely the tensile strength increases and reaches a maximum and then decreases as the confining pressure increases, and the possible reason is suggested that the different levels of confining pressure can cause changes in the magnitude of friction force in the steep dip grain interface and the shear stress in the small inclination grain interface. As the confining pressure goes up, the macrofailure pattern of granite sample under CDTT shows a continuous transition from tensile failure to mixed tensile-shear failure and to shear failure, and further to the compression-shear failure. A new strength criterion, containing a parabolic segment and a linear segment, to consider the “bulge” phenomenon of the strength envelope was proposed. It was examined using the tested data of granite as well as the previous data of Carrara marble, Berea sandstone, and Longmaxi shale, behaving a good fitting effect.

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Data availability

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

P c, r :

Confining pressure

σ c :

Axial compressive strength

σ t0 :

Uniaxial tensile strength

CDTT:

Confined direct tension test

F t :

Axial tensile stress produced by the test equipment

E t, μ t :

Tensile elastic modulus and tensile Poisson's ratio

E c, μ c :

Compressive elastic modulus and compressive Poisson's ratio

|ε at|, ε rt, |ε vt|:

Tensile axial peak strain, tensile radial peak strain and tensile volumetric peak strain

ε ac, |ε rc|, ε vc :

Compressive axial peak strain, compressive radial peak strain and compressive volumetric peak strain

a :

Axial stress applied to the specimen

σ t :

Axial tensile strength

σ tu :

Ultimate tensile strength

σ r0 :

Radial compressive strength

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Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41972297 and 41807279), the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin Municipality, China (No. 20JCQNJC00980), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province, China (No. E2019202336), and the Supporting program of hundred promising innovative talents in Hebei provincial education office (No. SLRC2019027). Chongqing Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. cstc2019jcyj-bshX0125) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M653343).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300401, China

    Da Huang, Yang Liu & Duofeng Cen

  2. College of Geology Engineering and Geomatics, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China

    Da Huang

  3. Key Laboratory of Geological Hazards Mitigation for Mountainous Highway and Waterway, Chongqing Municipal Education Commission, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing, 400074, China

    Bin Zeng

  4. School of Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Zhijun Wu

  5. State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430071, China

    Yongtao Yang

Authors
  1. Da Huang
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  2. Yang Liu
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  3. Duofeng Cen
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  4. Bin Zeng
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Correspondence to Yang Liu or Duofeng Cen.

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Huang, D., Liu, Y., Cen, D. et al. Effect of confining pressure on deformation and strength of granite in confined direct tension tests. Bull Eng Geol Environ 81, 110 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02609-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02609-y

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