岩石の熱疲労に関する実験的研究

抄録

It is well known that rocks are more or less deteriorated by sudden cooling after being heated. Furthermore, by repeating the cycle of heating-cooling, rocks might be expected to be weakened more severely.
In this paper, measuring the changes of the physical and mechanical properties of rocks including apparent specific gravity, P-wave velocity, Young's modulus and uniaxial compressive strength, the thermal fatigue process of rocks is characterized for four kinds of rocks, namely, OGINO tuff, EMOCHI welded tuff, AKIYOSHI marble and INADA granite. The cylindrical specimens are suddenly submerged into water after being heated and the cycle is automatically repeated in the testing machine.
The maximum temperature and the maximum cycles in the experiment are 600°C and 5⁴, respectively.
The main results obtained are as follows:
(1) The main failure mechanism is different between the crystalline rock and the sedimentary rock. The failure of the former takes place by the thermal interaction between minerals and that of the latter by the transient thermal stresses. As the result, crystalline rocks collapse to be particles or powders and sedimentary rocks are fractured initiating regular thermal cracks (Fig.6).
(2) The strengths of the rocks except welded tuff decrease remarkably within 5 cycles if the temperature is sufficiently high and the cooling time is larger enough (Fig.3).
(3) The strengths of the rocks except marble decrease as the cooling time increases. However, the additional effect is very small if the cooling time is larger than that needed for the specimens to be perfectly cooled (Fig.4).
(4) The cycles at which the specimens collapse exponentially increase as the temperature decreases (Fig.5).