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Rock Mech. Rock Engng. (2005) 38 (1), 119 DOI 10.

1007/s00603-004-0031-6

On Tension Failure of 2-D Rock Specimens and Associated Acoustic Emission


By

L. G. Tham1 , H. Liu1 , C. A. Tang2 , P. K. K. Lee1 , and Y. Tsui1


1

Rock Engineering Research Centre, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, P.R. China 2 Center for Rockbursts and Induced Seismicity Research, Northeastern University, Shenyang, P.R. China Received March 5, 2003; accepted February 6, 2004 Published online July 27, 2004 # Springer-Verlag 2004

Summary
To understand the failure mechanism of quasi-brittle materials like rock under tensile stress, observations on the failure process of granite and marble plate specimens under tension are summarized and presented. Micro- and macro-failure properties of rock plates under uniaxial tension have been characterized by using an acoustic emission technique. Acoustic emission signals associated with micro-fractures are captured to locate the sources. An algorithm based on arrival time difference is developed for this purpose. The results reveal clearly the failure processes of rock which include initiation, nucleation and propagation of micro-fractures when the axial stress is close to the peak strength of rock. It is believed that the difference in heterogeneity between granite and marble specimens leads to different fracture shapes and different behaviors of associated acoustic emissions. Numerical simulation of acoustic emissions for two-dimensional tensile test is also carried out. The simulated characteristics are in good agreement with the experimental results. Keywords: Tension failure, acoustic emission, fracture, rock Weibull, numerical simulation.

1. Introduction Characterization of the behavior of rock in tension is not easy because of a lack of test data (tension failure is often unstable and the failure process is difcult to observe) and the existence of strain localization. As localization introduces a greater heterogeneity of strain throughout the specimen, interpretation of test data becomes very complicated. One technique to monitor the failure process during tensile test is to delay this instability process so that the overall information of principal rock properties can be obtained. Earlier studies by Peng (1970) on rocks under tension

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successfully obtained the complete stress-strain curves of granite, marble, limestone and sandstone. Nova (1990) and Okubo and Fukui (1996) obtained complete stressstrain curves of various rock specimens by using a stress-strain-combined parameter for the feedback control. Their observations revealed the similarity in the shapes of stress-strain curves for tension and compression. Their studies also indicated that the difference in strength from location to location in a rock specimen plays a main role in both the tensile and compressive behavior of rock. To obtain further evidence to corroborate this conclusion, more observations have been made on the micro-fractures and their distributions in real time. Elastic stress waves (acoustic emissions) are generated by sudden and localized redistribution of stresses accompanying the deformation of rock specimens. Possible reasons for the internal stress changes are plastic deformation, crack initiation and growth as well as crack opening and closure. These signals propagate to the surface of the specimen and can be detected by one or an array of sensors. Hence, the development of cracks can be traced by measuring the acoustic emission signals. The association between acoustic activity and micro-fracture was observed in ice and in glass (Gold, 1960; Byerlee and Peselnic, 1970). Mogi (1962) and Scholz (1968a, b) had also carried out studies on rock failure using the acoustic emission technique. Hardy (1972) pointed out that for granite under a constant uniaxial compressive stress, most prominent acoustic events are directly associated with small jumps in strain. Further studies also showed that most of the sources of acoustic emission are damage-related although other processes may be involved in generating acoustic emission signals (Paterson, 1978). Locating the acoustic emission sources is therefore a useful technique to trace the failure process of rock. Lockner et al. (1992) presented the nucleation and growth of microscopic fault planes in granite and sandstone samples in quasi-static compression experiments by locating the acoustic emission events. They used the rate of acoustic emission as a feedback to control the axial load. In this paper, acoustic emission events have been observed during direct tensile tests of both single-notched and double-notched marble and granite plates. The tension failure process is controlled by a stress-strain-combined parameter so that more details of failure can be obtained. Acoustic emission signals are captured by an array of acoustic emission sensors and the sources of acoustic emission signals are located by an algorithm based on arrival time. Numerical simulation is also presented in this paper to illustrate the brittle failure process of the rock under tensile load.

2. Experimental Techniques In order to achieve perfect coaxiality, a pair of specially designed clamps which consist of two universal joints and two chains are used to attach the test specimen to the load platens. Such arrangement can minimize the eccentricity of the applied load. A rock specimen is carefully adhered to the two clamps with epoxy adhesive (Fig. 1). All the tests are performed on the servo-controlled MTS 815 rock test system. A stress-strain-combined parameter is used as a feedback to control the loading rate. Twelve marble and four granite plates are tested under tension. Their average physical properties are summarized in Table 1.

Tension Failure of 2-D Rock Specimens

Fig. 1. Setup of the tension test

Table 1. Average physical properties of rock specimens tested Fujian marble Dimension (mm) Grain size Color Youngs Modulus in tension (MPa) Tensile strength (MPa) Strain at peak strength (mm=mm) 300 100 10 300 100 20 ne white 30000 1.803 113 106 Hong Kong granite 300 100 20 medium light gray 45000 5.604 340 106

Six sensors with resonance frequency ranges from 200 to 750 kHz were attached rmly to the plate coupled with silicone vacuum grease. The trigger level of acoustic emission signals was set at 50 dB so that environmental noises can be ltered. The signals were fed into pre-ampliers with 60 dB of gain and lters. A pre-trigger of 50 ms allowed the entire waveform to be recorded. After amplication, the signals were simultaneously recorded and analyzed. The data acquisition system digitizes the waveform of acoustic emission signals at each of the six transducers with a sampling rate of 10 MHz. Figure 2 shows the typical acoustic emission waveform captured by

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Fig. 2. Typical acoustic emission events captured by six sensors

the six acoustic emission transducers. The arrival time can be determined either manually from the screen or automatically by using a pre-dened threshold. In this study, most data obtained automatically is processed manually.

3. Location of Acoustic Emission Source The most common source location procedures rely on an array of sensors placed on the specimen surface. The sensors are widely separated so that the acoustic emission signals are emitted from the region enclosed by the array (Miller and McIntire, 1987). The location of sources can then be determined by the arrival time difference approach (Blake et al., 1974; Rindorf, 1981; Xiaorong et al., 1998), the dispersion analysis approach (Grabec et al., 1998) or the quantitative moment tensor approach (Scruby, 1985; Ohtsu, 1995). In the present study, the arrival time difference approach is adopted. As the details of the approach are well documented, only the pertinent points are described. Consider a set of sensors (Ti , Tj and Tk ) as shown in Fig. 3. In the gure, the AE is the source of the acoustic emission. If the arrival time of the signal at each sensor is

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Fig. 3. Locating AE signals using isochrones. Ts represent positions of AE sensors

measured, it can be shown that a) for sensor Ti and Tj q q Vp ij x xi 2 y yi 2 x xj 2 y yj 2 b) for sensor Tj and Tk Vp jk where Vp is the p-wave velocity, ij is the difference in the arrival times measured at points i and j, and jk is the difference in the arrival times measured at points j and k. Solving the above equations, coordinates of the source can be determined. Graphically, the equations can be represented by two sets of hyperbolic curves and the intersection of the curves is the location of the source. q q x xj 2 y yj 2 x xk 2 y yk 2 1b 1a

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In application of the above approach, attention has to be paid to the following:  The minimum number of sensors comprising an array is determined by the dimension of the space to be monitored. In general, if the wave velocity of the rock is known and constant, N 1 sensors are required in the array for an N-dimensional problem if the absolute starting time of the signal record is not known. Additional sensors are denitely useful as they provide redundancy such that averaging can be carried out to obtain the best location. As the plates are two-dimensional, at least three sensors are required but six have been used in the present study.  Due to the dispersion of the elastic wave as it propagates, it may be difcult to determine the arrival time. The difculty can be overcome by using an array comprising several sensors so that the signals are emitted in the region bound by the sensors. In such cases, one can have a sufcient number of sensors located at approximately the same distances away from an acoustic emission source.  In the case that there are initially cracks in the specimen, the above equation can be modied by the method suggested by Dowding (1985). If the p-wave velocities in the principal directions are Vp1 and Vp2 , then k Vp 1 : Vp 2 2

Assuming that the angle between the principal directions of anisotropy and the axes of the coordinate system x; y is , the new coordinates x0 ; y0 of an equivalent isotropic medium with identical p-wave velocity can be obtained from the following transformation         0  x cos  sin  1 0 x cos  sin  3 y sin  cos  0 k sin  cos  y0 After the transformation, the coordinates of the source can be determined by using equations (1a) and (1b).

4. Numerical Simulation RFPA (Rock Failure Process Analysis2D system) was used to simulate the behavior of the test plates (Tang and Kaiser, 1998; Tang and Kou, 1998; Tang, 1998). The program is based on the nite element approach. The two-dimensional rock plate was divided into n elements. As the plate was composed of grains having different strengths and stiffnesses, pores and microcracks etc, it was necessary to simulate the plate as a heterogeneous material. In view of the fact that it is difcult, if not impossible, to dene the properties of each element in accordance with the actual variation in the properties of the test plates, a statistical approach is adopted by dening the properties of each element by the Weibull function, that is   m   m1 m    exp 4 0 0 0 where m and 0 are shape parameters which determine the strength of each element. The higher the m value, the more homogeneous is the rock material. The elastic
2D

Tension Failure of 2-D Rock Specimens

modulus can be dened by a function of the same form by simply replacing  and 0 by E and E0 . Of course, the parameter m will be changed so to achieve a better matching of the actual behaviour. The load-displacement behaviors can be obtained by increasing the loads or deformations. The location of acoustic emission activities as well as the stress eld can be computed for each step. As the solution process is discussed by Tang and Kaiser (1998), it is not repeated here and reference can be made to the paper for full details. In the numerical simulation, two layers of elements with a larger modulus on top and bottom of the specimen are used to simulate the platens in the test. The specimen is divided into 100 200 elements. The homogeneity index m is set to be 3. The other properties are: Youngs modulus E0 45000 MPa; Poissons ratio 0.25 and 0 200 MPa.

5. Test Results and Discussion Three types of plates, namely integral, single-notched and double-notched plates, were tested (Fig. 4). The number of acoustic emissions, energy of each acoustic activity and locations of such activities were measured. Numerical simulations were carried out for each plate. In the following sections, typical results are presented together with comparisons between experimental and numerical results.

5.1 Stress-Strain and Acoustic Emission Characteristics A typical stress-strain curve of granite plates in the direct tensile test is depicted in Fig. 5. The curve is almost linear before the peak stress is reached, then drops vertically from the peak point. Such a curve is quite typical for brittle materials. Curves of cumulative hits and the energy of acoustic emission are shown in Figs. 6 and 7 whereas curves of the emitted rate of acoustic emission hit and energy are depicted in Figs. 8 and 9. In Fig. 6, before point A, only intermittent acoustic emission signals can be detected. When the load reaches point A, the amount and the energy of acoustic emission signals increase dramatically. It is believed that macrofailures (point B marked in Fig. 6) occur rapidly. From the experiment results, the following conclusions can be drawn: a) Before occurrence of the main failure, signals are randomly distributed. The energy level of the signals is low. b) The amount of acoustic emission activities increases dramatically when the stress level is close to the peak strength. The results of numerical simulation are shown in Figs. 10 to 12. The two sets of results are in good agreement. On the other hand, the behavior of marble is quite different (Figs. 13 to 17). Before point B in Fig. 14, the onsets of acoustic emission signals are of a low energy level and nearly continuous. The hits number is lower than granite. Only about 2000 to 3000 acoustic emission events can be detected and these are much fewer than the number recorded for granite specimens (more than 10000 acoustic emission events

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Fig. 4. Fracture loci of (a) integral plate; (b) and (d) single notched plates; (c) and (e) double-notched plates

are detected for each granite specimen). Point A, which indicates the coalescence or kernel of micro-cracks in granite, is not obvious in marble specimens and it is not shown in the gures.

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Fig. 5. a Stress vs. strain curve of Granite (GP12) under direct tensile test; b Stress vs. time diagram

Fig. 6. Cumulative hits diagram of Granite (GP12) under direct tensile test

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Fig. 7. Energy emitted diagram of Granite (GP12) under direct tensile test

Fig. 8. Hits emitted per minute during the test

Fig. 9. Energy emitted per minute during the test

It is believed that the differences in heterogeneity between granite and marble should be responsible for this phenomenon. From the photographs of the granite and marble specimens under microscope (Figs. 18 and 19), it can be observed that the

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Fig. 10. Calculated stress vs. strain curve of rock under direct tensile test from numerical simulation. The experimental results are shown in bold

Fig. 11. Calculated cumulative hits diagram. The experimental results are shown in bold

Fig. 12. Calculated rate of hits vs. axial displacement. The experimental results are shown in Fig. 8

fracture surface of granite has a jigsaw pattern while that for marble is relatively smooth. It is believed that the jigsaw pattern is due to the fact that granite contains different types of minerals (biotite, feldspar and quartz). On the other hand, carbonate

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Fig. 13. a Stress vs. strain curve of marble (MP10) under direct tensile test; b Stress vs. time diagram

Fig. 14. Cumulative hits diagram of marble (MP10) under direct tensile test

is almost the only component for marble. Figures 18b and 19b, which are obtained by using the double replica technique (Li et al., 1999), show that more microcracks can be identied near the fracture surface in granite. The compression and tensile tests on marble show that marble is more ductile than granite (Okubo, 1996). The acoustic emission events with small energy are believed to be the effect of local plastic deformation of marble (Blair and Cook, 1998).

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Fig. 15. Energy emitted diagram of marble (MP10) under direct tensile test

Fig. 16. Hits emitted per minute during the test

Fig. 17. Energy emitted per minute during the test

5.2 Fracture Trajectory The fracture trajectory of the plates is shown in Fig. 4. For the integral plate, the fractures do not necessarily occur in the middle part of the plates. It indicates that the fracture occurrence is related not only to the stress eld but also to the original

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Fig. 18. Fracture surface of marble specimen

Fig. 19. Fracture surface of granite specimen

fractures or damages in the specimens. For single-notched plates, the fractures initiated at the tip of the notch. The fractures of the double-notched plates started at the tip of one of the notches and then developed along a path that did not necessarily end at the notch on the other side of the plates. The distribution of acoustic emission sources is shown in Figs. 20 and 21. As most of the signals are assumed to be emitted from microcracks in the granite plate, it can be concluded that the microcracks appear randomly in the plate in the rst stage of the test. However, the amount of acoustic emission activities around the tip of the notch is much higher. Figure 22 shows the location of acoustic emission signals obtained by the numerical simulation for the single-notched plate. The numerical results show that acoustic emission signals rst appear randomly throughout the specimen. As the fractures develop, they are more concentrated near the tip of the fractures developed from the notch. It must be pointed out that every failure in the elements was reported in the numerical simulation, and therefore, very weak acoustic signals were also identied. As only those higher than the threshold were recorded in the experiments, it is not surprising to nd that a larger number of signals are reported in the numerical results.

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Fig. 20. Location of AE signals (corresponding to Points A, B and C marked in the Fig. 6)

Fig. 21. Location of AE signals for a double-notched marble plate (MP10)

In addition, detailed stress elds were obtained in the numerical simulation. The stress eld is useful for understanding the failure-induced re-distribution of stresses in the failure process. Some of the stress elds are presented in Fig. 23. Near the tip of the notch, there is a high stress zone. The higher the stresses, the more likely the

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Fig. 22. Location of AE signals recorded in the numerical simulation in a single-notched sample. (Simulated by RFPA2D)

Fig. 23. Stress eld of rock plates under tension in a single-notched sample. (Simulated by RFPA2D)

Fig. 24. Location of AE signals recorded in the numerical simulation in double-notched sample. (Simulated by RFPA2D)

microcracks will initiate and develop. More acoustic emission signals associated with microcracks will be emitted from this zone. Accompanying the development of fracture, the high stress zone moves forward along the path that fracture will develop. The stress elds and acoustic emission locations for a double-notched plate are presented in Figs. 24 and 25. Though high stress zones appear near both tips (Fig. 25),

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Fig. 25. Stress eld of double-notched rock plates under tension. (Simulated by RFPA2D)

a visible crack develops rst at the tip of one notch rather than at both notches. This crack dominates and leads to the failure as it cuts through the plate. This phenomenon is very likely due to the differences in grain strength, size and shape near both tips. The crack appears rst in one of the notches and develops along a path with weaker strength. Consequently, it does not connect to the tip of the notch on the other side. Similar phenomenon was also observed for concrete (Van Mier, 1997).

5.3 Failure Process of Rock Plate Under Tensile Load Peng (1970) reported that the rst visible crack appears at nearly 90% of the peak strength in the pre-failure region. On the other hand, Okubo (1996) reported that the rst crack does not appear until the stress decreases to less than 20% in the post peak region. Li (1994) pointed out that the acoustic emission events in concrete started to concentrate on a narrow band of the specimen when the load reached about 80% of the peak value. In the present study, the visible crack appeared when the load was close to the peak strength. For granite, visible cracks appeared in the pre-peak region. However, such cracks will only appear after reaching the peak strength for marble specimens. Figure 20 illustrates that there are three stages in the process of micro-crack initiation and development in rock plates under tensile load. First, the scattered acoustic emission signals appear randomly in the plate (Fig. 20a), which can be explained by the fact that there exists some local low-strength grains or elements in the rock specimens. When the stress level increases, these weak elements may fail rst and energy will be released. The locations of such micro-seismic activities depend on the distribution of strength of micro-elements. In the second stage (Fig. 20b), it is noted that most acoustic emission events take place near the tip of the notch and crack will develop along the direction normal to the principal stress. Since the stress is relatively high in the zone near the tip of the notch, microcracks are found to coalesce in this zone. Final failure onsets when micro-cracks accumulate to a certain level. The crack grows rapidly and the specimen will rupture suddenly (Fig. 20c).

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6. Conclusions Based on the experiments and numerical simulation, acoustic emission characteristics in tensile test on rock can be divided into three stages. They are: a) emission of randomly distributed acoustic emission signals: micro-fractures occur due to the random distribution of strength of different micro-units throughout the rock; b) appearance of failure zone: it is the result of the coalescence of micro-fractures. The deformation of rock within the fracture zone is greater than outside the zone. It may be considered to be a strain localization phenomenon in rock; c) onset of main failure: the number of acoustic emission activities increases rapidly. It shows that the accumulative micro-fractures nally nd a weak path to release the accumulative energy obtained from external stresses. The phenomenon of coalescence of micro-fractures is more obvious in granite than in marble. The difference in their heterogeneity is mainly responsible for the difference in the behavior of rock under tensile stress and associated acoustic emission characteristics. The numerical simulations show that the numerically obtained acoustic emission behavior of rock under tension agrees well to a certain extent with the experimental observations.

Acknowledgments
The authors are thankful to Ms. Li Lian for her assistance with the micro observation on rock specimens using the double replica technique. The study is supported by the Research Grants Council of HKSARG (HKU7029=02E) and China NSF (50204003, 50134040 and 50174013).

References
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Li, Z. J., Shah, S. P. (1994): Localization of microcracking in concrete under uniaxial tension. ACI Mater. J. 91(4), 372381. Lockner, D. A., Byerlee, J. D., Kuksenko, V., Ponomarev, A., Sidorin, A. (1992): Observations of quasi-static fault growth from acoustic emissions. In: Evans, B., Wong, T. F. (eds.), Fault mechanics and transport properties of rocks. Academic Press, London, 331. Miller, P. K., Mclntire, P. (1987): Nondestructive testing handbook, 2nd edn., vol. 5. American Society for Nondestructive Testing, Columbus, OH, USA. Mogi, K. (1962): Study of elastic socks caused by the fracture of heterogeneous materials and its relation to earthquake phenomena. Bull. Earth. Res. Inst. 40, 125. Nova, R., Zaninetti, A. (1990): An investigation into the tensile behavior of a schistose rock. Int. J. Rock Mech. Min. Sci. Geomech. Abstr. 27, 231242. Ohtsu, M. (1995): Acoustic emission theory for moment tensor analysis. Res. Nondestr. Eval. 6, 169184. Okubo, S., Fukui, F. (1996): Complete stress-strain curves for various rock types in uniaxial tension. Int. J. Rock Mech. Min. Sci. Geomech. Abstr. 33(6), 549556. Paterson, M. S. (1978): Experimental rock deformation the brittle eld. Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York. Peng, S. S. (1970): A note on the fracture propagation and time-dependent behavior of rocks in uniaxial tension. Int. J. Rock Mech. Min. Sci. Geomech. Abstr. 12, 125127. Rindorf, H. J. (1981): Location of microseismic activity. 3rd Conference on Acoustic Emission= microseismic Activity in Geological Structures and Materials, Pennsylvania State University, USA, 695706. Scholz, C. H. (1968a): Microfracturing and inelastic deformation of rock in compression. J. Geo. Res. 74(4), 1417. Scholz, C. H. (1968b): The frequence-magnitude relation of micro-fracturing in rock and its relation to earthquakes. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 58(1), 399415. Scruby, C. B. (1985): Quantitative acoustic emission techniques. In: Sharpe, R. S. (ed.), Research techniques in non-destructive testing, vol. 8. Academic Press, New York, 141210. Tang, C. A., Kaiser, P. K. (1998): Numerical simulation of damage accumulation and seismic energy release in unstable failure of brittle rock. Part I: fundamentals. Int. J. Rock Mech. Min. Sci Geomech. Abstr. 35, 113121. Tang, C. A., Kou, S. Q. (1998): Crack propagation and coalescence in brittle materials. Engng. Fract. Mech. 61, 311324. Tang, C. A. (1998): A new approach to numerical method of modeling geological processes and rock engineering problems. Engng. Geol. 49, 207214. Van Mier, J. G. M. (1997): Fracture process of concrete. CRC Press, New York. Xiaorong, L., Sachse, W., Grabec, I. (1998): Use of an automatic modeler and a small receiver array for acoustic emission (AE) source location. Ultrasonics 36(15), 539547. Authors address: Dr. L. G. Tham, The University of Hong Kong, Department of Civil Engineering, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, P.R. China; e-mail: hrectlg@hkucc.hku.hk

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