Sedimentary rocks of the Neogene, so called “soft rocks” are widely distributed in Japan. These soft rocks, especially smectite bearing tuffs and mudstones, sometimes cause the serious troubles such as ground pressure, landslide and crumbling of cut slope. To clarify the relationship between chemical properties and deterioration of the soft rocks during water absorbing process, typical soft rock samples collected from hydrothermally or diagenetically altered Neogene system have been studied by X-ray diffraction method, polarizing microscope, CEC and exchangeable cation analysis, slaking test and water absorbing test. All of samples are abound of many kinds of clay minerals and zeolites such as smectite, mica, chlorite, kaokinite, clinoptilolite and mordenite. These rocks can be devided into three groups on the basis of exchangeable cation compositions, Na-type, Ca-type and mixed type. On the other hand, the results of slaking test indicate that the deformation of the rock specimens can be devided into three types, swelling type, crumbling type and intermediate type. These types correspond to exchangeable cation types, namely, swelling type to Na-type, crumbling type to Ca-type and intermediate type to mixed type respectively. The water absorbing curves are grouped into two types of “successively increasing type” and “saturated type”. Na type corresponds to the former and Ca type to the latter. The results indicate that the deteioration process of soft rocks is affected by the content of smectite, and exchangeable cation composition of caly minerals.
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