Ru Zhang

Static and Dynamic Flexural Strength Anisotropy of Barre Granite

Granite exhibits anisotropy due to pre-existing microcracks under tectonic loadings; and the mechanical property anisotropy such as flexural/tensile strength is vital to many rock engineering applications. In this paper, Barre Granite is studied to understand the flexural strength anisotropy under a wide range of loading rates using newly proposed semi-circular bend tests. Static tests are conducted with a MTS hydraulic servo-control testing machine and dynamic tests with a split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) system. Six samples groups are fabricated with respect to the three principle directions of Barre granite. Pulse shaping technique is used in all dynamic SHPB tests to facilitate dynamic stress equilibrium. Finite element method is utilized to build up equations calculating the flexural tensile strength. For samples in the same orientation group, a loading rate dependence of the flexural tensile strength is observed. The measured flexural tensile strength is higher than the tensile strength measured using Brazilian disc method at given loading rate and this scenario has been rationalized using a non-local failure theory. The flexural tensile strength anisotropy features obvious dependence on the loading rates, the higher the loading rate, the less the anisotropy and this phenomenon may be explained considering the interaction of the preferentially oriented microcracks.

Differences in the acoustic emission characteristics of rock salt compared with granite and marble during the damage evolution process

Rock salt cavities for energy storage are important elements of energy supply management and sustainability. The mechanical properties of other common rocks have already been adequately investigated, but a systematic characterization of the differences in acoustic emission (AE) characteristics among rock salt and other common rocks is needed. In this study, the AE characteristics of the full-regime uniaxial compression of rock salt and common rocks such as granite and marble were determined. A damage variable based on AE parameters and a methodology for its determination were established, including an analysis of the characteristics of the AE time–space evolution, the AE amplitude distribution and the damage evolution based on AE parameters. Clear differences were observed in the AE characteristics of rock salt compared with granite and marble during the damage evolution process. The AE activity and energy release of rock salt with coarse grains and nonuniform structures decreased gradually with increasing stress level. The AE activity of rock salt appeared in a continuous, group-occurring form. The AE spatial distribution of rock salt was relatively uniform, without a definite rupture surface. The AE amplitude distribution varied slowly, and the proportion of AE events with small amplitudes increased gradually during compression in rock salt. Moreover, the damage in rock salt predominantly occured during the pre-peak period, resulting in a large damage variable of 0.9 at peak stress. By contrast, the damage variables of granite and marble are only 0.5 and 0.1, respectively, at peak stress. Rock salt exhibited less damage when approaching failure, resulting in a gentler and steadier process. And the plastic characteristics of rock salt are relatively obvious. These properties, to some extent, ensure the safety of underground storage engineering when rock salt is chosen as the medium.

The relationships among stress, effective porosity and permeability of coal considering the distribution of natural fractures: theoretical and experimental analyses

Although the relationships among stress, effective porosity and permeability of coal are a fundamental research topic that has been studied for decades and are widely used in analyzing the mechanical behavior of coal seams and predicting coalbed methane production, most relevant studies are based on idealized models and do not consider the influence of natural fracture distributions. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of the interrelationships among stress, effective porosity and permeability of coal, a series of effective porosity and permeability determinations have been conducted under different overburden stresses using an automated permeameter–porosimeter considering the directional distribution of natural fractures in coal. The experimental results show that the directional distribution of natural fractures provides a substantial contribution to the anisotropy of the effective porosity and absolute permeability of coal, which exponentially decrease with increasing overburden stress. An existing permeability model was modified to reflect the influence of the natural fracture distribution on the power law relationship between effective porosity and permeability, i.e., the exponent is not constant, but a variable related to the natural fracture distribution. The anisotropic effective porosity sensitivity and stress sensitivity of coal are also discussed, and the coal mass is shown to have the highest effective porosity sensitivity and lowest stress sensitivity in the direction perpendicular to the bedding planes compared to those in other directions.

Elliptical fracture network modeling with validation in Datong Mine, China

Roof-coal recovery rate and the performance of gas extraction are essentially controlled by the fractures within coal-rock mass. Thus, it is important to generate the accurate fracture network ahead of mining face. In this study, ten boreholes located differently from the 8212 working face of Tashan Mine in Datong coal mining group, China, were drilled. With the help of borehole video instruments, the location, orientation of each fracture and the fracture number of different intersection type on each borehole wall were mapped with the advancing of mining face. These data were analyzed using the Matlab Toolbox RJNS3D and Dips to determine structural homogeneity zone, to find the number of fracture sets that exist in the coal-rock mass, volume density frequency for each set and the probability distributions of orientation, fracture size in 3-D. Sampling biases associated with orientation, spacing were corrected during the process. The constructed fracture networks were validated by comparing the observed mean spacing along normal vector of mean orientation for each set and the predict value on similar scanlines.

Fractal and volume characteristics of 3D mining-induced fractures under typical mining layouts

Mining-induced fractures, which can release natural gas and enhance gas migration, are indispensable in the co-extraction of coal and methane (CECM). Investigations into mining-induced fracture systems ahead of the coalface are beneficial in elucidating the complex differences between mining processes and their related static and dynamic strata stress fields. Triaxial tests were conducted on coal samples to simulate the mining-induced mechanical behaviors of the coal seam under three widely used mining processes, i.e., top-coal caving mining (TCCM), non-pillar mining (NPM) and protected coal seam mining (PCSM). Mining-induced fractures were created at the laboratory scale. An industrial computed tomography scanning system was employed to scan the ruptured coal samples and measure the geometric characteristics of the fractures associated with each simulated process. Coronal and sagittal views as well as a precise 3D solid geometrical model were reconstructed for each process. It is shown that the mining layout influences the spatial morphology of mining-induced fractures. Using the box-counting method, a quantitative fractal characterization of the fracture system was estimated for each mining method. The estimated average fractal dimensions of the fracture systems generated in the simulated TCCM, NPM, and PCSM processes were 2.0557, 2.0362 and 2.0129, respectively. Additionally, a scale-independent fracture intensity, FI, was defined to further characterize the volume features of the mining-induced fracture systems. The fracture intensity was 0.6 for the NPM process, 0.5 for TCCM and 0.21 for PCSM.

Lessons Learnt from Measurements of Vertical Pressure at a Top Coal Mining Face at Datong Tashan Mines, China

Mining mechanics usually refers to the movement of overburden rocks and stress redistribution induced by mining effects, especially during the evolution of abutment pressure at a mining face (Xie et al. 2011). The characteristic of the stress field at a mining face serves as an important foundation for achieving roof safety and preventing excess gas (Suchowerska et al. 2013; Yang et al. 2011a). The mining effect may cause coal rocks to fracture, causing coal methane to escape from the fractured rock into the mining face, resulting in the exceedance of safety limits for gas. This is especially relevant under intensive mining conditions (Yang et al. 2011b; Li et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2012). Therefore, the study of mining mechanics is of great importance in achieving the safe and efficient coal mining. Many specific studies have been conducted to investigate stress redistribution, strata deformation, strata failure and fluid flow of coal seams (Islam and Shinjo 2009; Yang et al. 2014). However, these studies only focused on mining mechanics induced by mining advances, and neglected local mining effects, such as coal caving processes used for top coal caving method. In this manuscript, a field test and analytical analysis were conducted. A combination of global and local mining mechanics was consequently proposed for the top coal caving. Based on the real-time pressure monitoring of single props and hydraulic supports at a top coal mining face, intensive factors of pressure were adopted to provide a quantitative description of the mining mechanics.

The Effect of Bedding Structure on Mechanical Property of Coal

The mechanical property of coal, influencing mining activity considerably, is significantly determined by the natural fracture distributed within coal mass. In order to study the effecting mechanism of bedding structure on mechanical property of coal, a series of uniaxial compression tests and mesoscopic tests have been conducted. The experimental results show that the distribution characteristic of calcite particles, which significantly influences the growth of cracks and the macroscopic mechanical properties of coal, is obviously affected by the bedding structure. Specifically, the uniaxial compression strength of coal sample is mainly controlled by bedding structure, and the average peak stress of specimens with axes perpendicular to the bedding planes is 20.00 MPa, which is 2.88 times the average amount of parallel ones. The test results also show a close relationship between the bedding structure and the whole deformation process under uniaxial loading.

An Experimental Study of Fatigue Behavior of Granite Under Low-Cycle Repetitive Compressive Impacts

In nature, rock structures such as tunnel walls, rock pillars, excavation roofs, and bridge abutments are often subjected to repetitive/cyclic loads. Cyclic loading could result in accumulated fatigue damage which may prematurely destruct rock structures at a stress level lower than its characterized strength under monotonic conditions (Bagde and Petroš 2005a). Therefore, study on fatigue damage evolution and deformation characteristics of rocks under cyclic loading could facilitate understanding of the failure mechanism of rock, and hence contribute to better evaluate the safety and long-term stability of engineering structures such as underground mines and excavations and nuclear waste repositories (Xu et al. 2012). In the past decades, numerous efforts have been devoted to investigate fatigue damage of rocks under static or quasistatic cyclic loading. After performing a great number of cyclic loading tests on a variety of rock samples, e.g., granite, sandstone, limestone, and salt rock, under confined or unconfined pressure conditions, it is now recognized that the fatigue properties of rock material are dependent on the maximum stress, loading amplitude, and frequency (Bagde and Petros 2005a, b; Cerfontaine and Collin 2018; Tao and Mo 1990; Xiao et al. 2009, 2010). To be more specific, with increasing maximum stress and amplitude, the fatigue life, i.e., the number of cycles before failure, decreases (Fuenkajorn and Phueakphum 2010; Haimson and Kim 1972; Momeni et al. 2015; Singh 1989); the fatigue strength, i.e., the maximum stress a rock material can endure for a given number of loading cycles without failure, and fatigue life slightly increase with increasing strain and stressing rate at the same applied stress level (Lajtai et al. 1991; Momeni et al. 2015; Ray et al. 1999); higher confining pressure results in larger axial strain at failure (Ma et al. 2013; Liu and He 2012). In addition, it was found that there is a threestage, i.e., transient, steady, and accelerated, deformation law of axial strain of rock under cyclic loading with an applied maximum stress level higher than the threshold value (Momeni et al. 2015; Xiao et al. 2010; Zhang et al. 2008). In addition to static or quasi-static cyclic loads, rock structures may also bear low-cycle repetitive dynamic loads such as blasting and earthquakes. For example, during blasting excavation of tunnels, adjacent rock structures and completed tunnel sections are subject to repetitive dynamic loadings from sequential blasting. In enhanced geothermal systems, rock structures such as boreholes are subjected to not only cycles of high pressure during fluid injection process but also repetitive injection-induced seismicity (Giardini 2009; Li et al. 2018a). Moreover, progressive damage accumulation of the underground excavation was also observed under repeated seismic loadings (Ma and Brady 1999). Although the mechanical and fracture properties of rock under dynamic loading have been extensively studied (Li et al. 1999, 2008; Zhang and Zhao 2013; Zhao et al. 1999), dynamic fatigue behaviors of rocks have been rarely * J. B. Zhu jbzhu@tju.edu.cn http://jgxy.tju.edu.cn/teachers.asp?id=180

History, advancements, and perspective of biological research in deep-underground laboratories: A brief review

The world is entering a new era of exploring and exploiting the deep-underground space. With humans poised to reach historical depths in the use of the deep Earth, it is essential to understand the effect of the deep-underground environment on the health of humans and other living organisms. This article outlines the history and development of biological research conducted in deep-underground laboratories and provides insight into future areas of investigation. Many deep-underground laboratories have investigated the effects of reduced cosmic ray muons flux, searching for rare events such as proton decay, dark matter particles, or neutrino interactions, but few have focused on the influence of the environmental factors in the deep-underground on living organisms. Some studies revealed that prokaryote and eukaryote cells maintained in low levels of background radiation exhibited an stress response, which manifested as changes in cell growth, enzyme activity, and sensitivity to factors that cause genetic damage; however, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. There remains an urgent need to understand the detrimental and beneficial biological effects of low background radiation and other factors in the deep-underground on humans and other organisms. Consequently, a multidisciplinary approach to medical research in the deep-underground has been proposed, creating a new discipline, deep-underground medicine, and representing a historical milestone for exploring the deep Earth and in medical research.

A Multiscale Simulation Method and Its Application to Determine the Mechanical Behavior of Heterogeneous Geomaterials

To study the micro/mesomechanical behaviors of heterogeneous geomaterials, a multiscale simulation method that combines molecular simulation at the microscale, a mesoscale analysis of polished slices, and finite element numerical simulation is proposed. By processing the mesostructure images obtained from analyzing the polished slices of heterogeneous geomaterials and mapping them onto finite element meshes, a numerical model that more accurately reflects the mesostructures of heterogeneous geomaterials was established by combining the results with the microscale mechanical properties of geomaterials obtained from the molecular simulation. This model was then used to analyze the mechanical behaviors of heterogeneous materials. Because kernstone is a typical heterogeneous material that comprises many types of mineral crystals, it was used for the micro/mesoscale mechanical behavior analysis in this paper using the proposed method. The results suggest that the proposed method can be used to accurately and effectively study the mechanical behaviors of heterogeneous geomaterials at the micro/mesoscales.