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Effect of frost damage on the pore interconnectivity of porous rocks by spontaneous imbibition method

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A Correction to this article was published on 11 October 2021

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Abstract

Frost damage due to freeze–thaw activity in hard rocks is a process that influences the appearance of the geo-relief of the landscape. Methods of frost damage assessment in rocks are based on parameters obtained mainly by destructive testing of samples. In this paper, nondestructive methods for the determination of pore connectivity as an important topological parameter affecting the migration of the fluid in rock material, as well as its variability due to freeze–thaw cycling, were employed. Tuff, andesite, and travertine, as well as two types of sandstones, were subjected to spontaneous imbibition testing. Based on the variation of the diffusion front with time, the slope of imbibition curve- C(I) was estimated and compared before and after 100 freeze–thaw thermal cycles. The samples were tested within a temperature range from − 10 to 10 °C in a fully saturated state in a controlled thermal chamber. Imbibition slopes were analyzed for fast (0.1–1 min) and medium (1–10 min) time intervals due to the variable petrophysical properties of the tested rocks. A considerable increase in imbibition slopes was detected, making the C(I) value a promising parameter that characterizes the interconnectivity of pores inside porous rocks. This parameter, in combination with the length of ice crystallization tc obtained from a thermistor probe located in the center of saturated dummy samples prepared from the same rock type subjected to freeze–thaw cycling, is capable of giving important indications of the degradability of rocks due to frost damage.

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Data availability

All samples of sandstones from the Pravčická Brána locality in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park (Czech Republic) and samples of andesites from the Babina quarry were taken with the consent of the competent authorities and in the presence of employees of the relevant institutions.

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Funding

This work was supported by a VEGA grant from the Slovak Ministry of Education (contract nos. 1/0503/19 and 1/0205/18) and the Comenius University Grant for Young Scientists (no. UK/244/2019).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Geology, Hydrogeology and Applied Geophysics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Martin Maľa & Vladimir Greif

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  1. Martin Maľa
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  2. Vladimir Greif
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Martin Maľa and Vladimír Greif. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Martin Maľa, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Martin Maľa.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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The original online version of this article was revised: The above article was published online with error in figures 2-3. The figures are now correctly replaced. 

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Maľa, M., Greif, V. Effect of frost damage on the pore interconnectivity of porous rocks by spontaneous imbibition method. Bull Eng Geol Environ 80, 8789–8799 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-021-02452-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-021-02452-7

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