Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-019-01686-w

ORIGINAL PAPER

Effect of water saturation on uniaxial compressive

strength and damage degree of clay-bearing sandstone
under freeze-thaw
Yanzhang Liu 1,2 & Yuantian Cai 1 & Shibing Huang 1,2,3 & Yunlin Guo 1 & Guofeng Liu 3

Received: 13 April 2019 / Accepted: 2 December 2019

# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019

Abstract
The previous researches mainly focused on the freeze-thaw damage of fully saturated rocks. However, most of the
nature rocks experience incomplete water saturation and it may not reach the threshold of frost cracking of a void, at
least 91% water saturation considering the 9% volumetric expansion of freezing water and ignoring water flow. A
serious freeze-thaw deterioration of unsaturated rocks may still occur when a critical saturation is reached. This
deterioration is caused by an accumulation of the long-term fatigue damage under freeze-thaw. Due to the impor-
tance of the clay-bearing rocks in geo-engineering practice, red sandstone is chosen to investigate the effect of water
saturation on the physico-mechanical properties of clay-bearing rock by testing the uniaxial compressive strength
(UCS) and P-wave velocity in laboratory. Besides, a fatigue damage model proposed by Liu et al. (Cold Reg Sci
Technol 120:96–107, 2015) is improved and applied to evaluate the freeze-thaw damage degree and estimate the
UCS after any freeze-thaw cycle. The research results suggest that freeze-thaw and water softening have an equally
important influence on the clay-bearing red sandstone. In the absence of freeze-thaw, the UCS of red sandstone
decreases with the increase of water saturation because of water weakening, including lubrication action, hydration
of clay minerals, and dissolution of soluble minerals. However, more than 90% of UCS loss occurs at the range of
the low degree of saturation below 60%. During freeze-thaw cycles, the critical saturation is about 60%, beyond
which freeze-thaw damage grows quickly with increasing saturation and freeze-thaw cycles. Macro-cracks, initiating
inside the clay minerals and propagating along the boundary of weather-resistant mineral grains, can be found on the
surfaces of fully saturated specimens, while dried red sandstone keeps intact without obvious defects after 50 freeze-
thaw cycles. Finally, the UCS of clay-bearing red sandstone with different water saturation is proved to be well
predicted after any freeze-thaw cycle by the improved fatigue damage model.

Keywords Degree of saturation . Freeze-thaw damage . Uniaxial compression strength . P-wave velocity . Clay-bearing sandstone

* Shibing Huang 1
School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Wuhan
huangshibing@wust.edu.cn University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430081, Hubei, China
2
Hubei Key Laboratory for Efficient Utilization and Agglomeration of
Yanzhang Liu Metallurgic Mineral Resources, Wuhan University of Science and
liuyanzhang@wust.edu.cn Technology, Wuhan 430081, Hubei, China
3
Yuantian Cai Key Laboratory for Highway Bridge and Tunnel Engineering of
wkdcyt@163.com Shaanxi Province, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710064, Shaanxi,
China
Yunlin Guo
guoyunlin_wust@163.com

Guofeng Liu
gfliu@chd.edu.cn

Introduction
The freeze-thaw damage of rock mass has a great threat on the
safety of rock engineering and stone buildings in cold regions
as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage at low temper-
ature (Park et al. 2010; Tan et al. 2014; Luo et al. 2015;
Murton et al. 2016; Shen et al. 2018). Freeze-thaw damage
of rock is mainly caused by 9% volumetric expansion of freez-
ing water inside voids (pores or cracks) and thermal stress
under low temperature (Hall 1999; Girard et al. 2013; Huang
et al. 2018c; Shen et al. 2018). An ice crystallization pressure
called frost heaving pressure in saturated voids induced by
water/ice phase transition under low temperature may lead to
frost cracking and development of defects. This pressure is
responsible for the damage of rock engineering in cold regions
(Hori and Morihiro 1998; Park et al. 2015; De Kock et al.
2015; Li et al. 2018; Tan et al. 2018).
Up to now, the loss of static and dynamic compressive
strength of fully saturated rocks under freeze-thaw is widely
investigated (Tan et al. 2011; Wang et al. 2016; Liu et al. 2018;
Ma et al. 2018). However, the previous researches show that
the freeze-thaw damage degree of rocks is greatly influenced
by the environment condition and intrinsic properties of rock,
including freeze-thaw temperature and period (Fraser 1959;
Matsuoka et al. 1998), the availability of water (Hall 2007),
mechanical strength (Nicholson and Nicholson 2000), poros-
ity and pore structure (Bellanger et al. 1993; De Argandona
et al. 1999; Hale and Shakoor 2003; Khanlari and Abdilor
2015), permeability (Saad et al. 2010; Vlahou and Worster
2010), and water saturation (Ruedrich et al. 2011; Huang
et al. 2018d). Prick (1997) proposed that water saturation
was the most important factor causing freeze-thaw damage
of rock, and only the degree of water saturation beyond 91%
would significantly cause rock deterioration. Water saturation
is a major factor for determining the magnitude of frost heav-
ing pressure inside rock (Vlahou 2012; Huang et al. 2018a).
When water saturation is beyond 91% in voids, a huge ice
pressure will arise caused by 9% volumetric expansion of
freezing water, to drive voids cracking and cause rock damage
(Huang et al. 2018c, 2019). However, many nature engineer-
ing rocks are hard to reach these high thresholds although the
rock of high water content is damaged much more seriously
(Prick 1995; Rode et al. 2016). The critical saturation to cause
frost expansion and has also been observed in soil (Liu et al.
2019). Therefore, the critical saturation, beyond which freeze-
thaw cycles would cause a significant damage of rock, had
aroused the enthusiasm of the scholars in recent years. Chen
et al. (2004) raised that if the initial degree of saturation was
beyond 70%, the freeze-thaw action would damage rock sig-
nificantly, but the property of tuff did not change below 60%
of saturation. Li et al. (2011) had proved the critical saturation
for porous rock-like material was about 86~88%. Beyond this
critical saturation, the freeze-thaw damage was inevitable.
Y. Liu et al.
Binal (2009) claimed at least 50% water content was needed
and most of the freeze-thaw destruction occurred in ignimbrite
and andesite samples when the saturation exceeded 75%. For
porous limestones with different porosities, Al-Omari et al.
(2015) claimed that the freeze-thaw damage arose after only
several cycles when the degree of saturation of porous lime-
stones exceeded 80~85%. Besides, this critical saturation of
85% had no relation with the porosity and freeze-thaw cycles.
Therefore, there should be a critical saturation for rocks to
cause serious damage under freeze-thaw.
Red sandstone is a typical clay-bearing rock widely distrib-
uted in China. It is easily argillized after contact with water. In
the previous studies, many experiment studies have conducted
to investigate the physico-mechanical properties of red sand-
stone. Baud et al. (2000) conducted compression experiments
on the red sandstone and found that the compressive strength
in saturated samples were lower than those in the dry samples
by 20 to 70%. They proposed that the water-weakening effects
may be caused by the reduction of the specific surface energy
in the presence of water. Zhao et al. (2007) investigated the
structure, composition, and disintegration characteristics of
red sandstone by a series of tests including laboratory tests.
They found the red sandstone with high hydrophilic minerals,
montmorillonite and illite, disintegrate more quickly and
thoroughly. Feng et al. (2018) tested the seepage property
and water outburst of red sandstone. She proposed that the
statues of seepage in broken red sandstone may become
unsteady due to the effects of water erosion. Khanlari and
Abdilor (2015) proposed that the pore size plays an important
role in sandstone resistance to freeze-thaw cycles but the grain
size and grain contacts do not have the expected effect on
sample deterioration during freeze-thaw cycles. Therefore,
the physico-mechanical properties of red sandstones have a
great influence on the water-weakening and freeze-thaw dam-
age of themselves. However, the saturation thresholds of sig-
nificant freeze-thaw damage have not been determined for
clay-bearing sandstones with high porosities. For saturated
sandstone, a large pore volume can store much water to in-
crease the effective frost heaving pressure after freezing.
Thereby, the saturated rocks of high porosities experienced
more serious damage under freeze-thaw in the previous ex-
periments (Hale and Shakoor 2003; Di Benedetto et al. 2015;
Eslami et al. 2018). Besides, most researchers had also shown
that a littler degradation occurs with the absence of water
compared with the saturated red sandstones under freeze-
thaw (Khanlari and Abdilor 2015). However, only 1% water
saturation may cause a remarkable decrease in strength for
sandstone containing clay minerals even in the absence of
freeze-thaw (Vásárhelyi and Ván 2006). The clay-bearing
rocks are sensitive to water and damaged much more when
suffer wetting-drying or freeze-thaw due to lubrication action,
hydration of clay minerals and dissolution of soluble minerals.
The strength can be significantly lowered by wetting even less
Effect of water saturation on uniaxial compressive strength and damage degree of clay-bearing sandstone...

1.0
than 2% clay mineral is existed in some sandstones (Zhao Sample 1
0.9 Sample 2
et al. 2017). Besides, clay minerals usually swell in the pres- Sample 3
ence of water, hence causing intergranular pressure and crys- 0.8 Sample 4
tallization pressure to harm rock (Hale and Shakoor 2003).
0.7
For some high clay-bearing sandstones, more than 70%
strength and stiffness may be decreased only by water soften- 0.6

Saturation
ing (Hawkins and McConnell 1992). However, Khanlari and 0.5
Abdilor (2015) proposed that the freeze-thaw cycles degraded
0.4
the physical and mechanical properties of upper red sand-
stones in central Iran more seriously than wetting and dry 0.3

cycles did. Therefore, the coupled freeze-thaw and water soft- 0.2
ening action on clay-bearing rocks need to be studied further.
0.1 10h
The sandstones usually contain some clay minerals and
they are widely distributed on the earth’s surface. Many 0.0
0 12 24 36 48 60 72 84 96 108
rock engineering projects are made up of sandstone includ- Time (h)
ing sandstone slope, subgrade, and buildings. The water
Fig. 1 The saturation degrees of red sandstones gradually decrease with
content is known as one of the most important factors to time at the room temperature
reduce the strength and deformability of clay-bearing rocks
(Erguler and Ulusay 2009; Feng et al. 2018). Besides, the Materials and methods
loss of dynamic and static strength of saturated sandstone
induced by freeze-thaw cycles is usually observed in lab- Sandstone samples preparation
oratory (Wang et al. 2016). The loss of physic-mechanical
properties of sandstones under freeze-thaw is caused by the The approximately homogenous red sandstones containing
fatigue damage due to the repeating loading of ice pressure clay minerals from Yichang, Hubei Province were chosen.
and thermal stress (Liu et al. 2015). The deterioration of Forty-two cylindrical samples with diameter of 50 mm and
sandstone under freeze-thaw and water softening is disad- height of 100 mm had been prepared in this experiment ac-
vantageous to the stability and safety of rock engineering. cording to the suggested method by ASTM (2010). These
So far, most of the previous studies dealing with freeze- sandstone samples were divided into 7 groups of different
thaw experiments were performed on dry or saturated saturation degrees including 0%, 30%, 60%, 70%, 80%,
sandstones (Wang et al. 2016; Li et al. 2018). However, 90%, and 100%. Each group contained 6 samples with the
the effect of different water saturations on the physic- same saturation to conduct freeze-thaw experiment from 0 to
mechanical properties of clay-bearing sandstones under approximately 50 cycles. Besides, another 3 dried samples
freeze-thaw is not clear. Especially, the critical saturations and 3 fully saturated samples were used to monitor the change
of clay-bearing sandstones should be determined in order of porosities under freeze-thaw, named Gk1~Gk3 and
to prevent the freeze-thaw damage, and predict the stability Sk1~Sk3, respectively.
of rock engineering composed of sandstone in cold
30
regions. 1-Feldspar
Based on the reasons above, red sandstone was cho- 2-Quantz
25
sen to investigate the effect of water saturation on the 3-Calcite
deterioration of clay-bearing rock under freeze-thaw. 4-Illite
1
Firstly, the preparation and test procedure of red sand- 20 3 5-Chlorite
Intensity(h1000)

stone with different saturation were introduced in the

“Materials and methods” section. Then, the test results 15
of UCSs and P-wave velocities were presented and an-
alyzed in the “Experimental results” section. In the
10
“Damage evolution of clay-bearing red sandstone under
freeze-thaw” section, the freeze-thaw damage degree of 2
5
red sandstone was characterized by an improved fatigue 1 5
1
1 1 1
damage model and the UCSs of those deteriorated sand- 43
3
4 1
11 1 2
1
2 2
5
stone were well estimated, considering the effect of wa- 0
ter saturation. In the “Discussion and conclusion” sec- 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

tion, some discussions and conclusions were given 2 㸦degree㸧

based on these studies. Fig. 2 X-ray diffraction pattern of red sandstone

Fig. 3 The temperature change of
samples and air in freezing
chamber under freeze-thaw cycles
The key point of this experiment is to make different degrees of
saturation for red sandstone. The preparation process of different
saturation is summarized as below: (1) These cylindrical samples
were placed in an electric drying oven with forced convection of
110 °C for 48 h until the weights kept constant. Then, measure the
mass of dry samples after cooling, denoted by md. (2) Place the dry
samples into a vacuum device of − 0.1 MPa to extract air for 6 h.
Afterwards, inject water into this vacuum device to submerge rock
samples in water for 24 h. At that time, these specimens were
considered to be completely saturated. The mass of fully saturated
samples were measured after removing the surface water, denoted
by msa. (3) Six fully saturated samples were wrapped quickly with
Fig. 4 Experimental devices
Y. Liu et al.
plastic films to maintain water. Another six fully saturated samples
were dried again in the oven of 110 °C for 48 h to reach the
completely dry state and wrapped with plastic films to keep dry.
Therefore, the fully saturated and dry samples were derived. (4)
The other saturated sandstone samples were placed in the air-
conditioned room with temperature of 25~27 °C in order to grad-
ually dehydrate to predetermined mass. The mass of these samples
were continuously monitored by a high-accuracy electronic bal-
ance with precision of 0.01 g. They were also wrapped with plastic
films immediately when reaching the specified saturations to keep
this water saturation all the time. The mass of these samples were
denoted by mt.
Effect of water saturation on uniaxial compressive strength and damage degree of clay-bearing sandstone...

Table 1 Main physic-mechanical

parameters of the fresh red Red sandstone Saturation (%) Density (g/cm3) UCS (MPa) Porosity (%) P-wave velocity (m/s)
sandstone
Saturated 100 2.40 26.6 12.23 2703
Dry 0 2.28 42.3 12.23 2532
Nature status 8.34 2.31 35.3 12.23 2538

50 50
Fig. 5 The stress-strain curves of N=0 N=10 N=0 N=10
45 45
red sandstone with different water N=20
N=40
N=30
N=50
N=20 N=30
40 N=40 N=50
40
saturations after freeze-thaw: a
35 35
0%, b 30%, c 60%, d 70%, e

Stress (MPa)

Stress (MPa)
30 30
80%, f 90%, g 100%
25 25
20 20
15 15
10 10
5 5
0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
Strain (%) Strain (%)
(a) (b)

50 50
N=0 N=10 N=0 N=10
45 N=20 N=30 45 N=20 N=30
40 N=40 N=50 N=40 N=50
40
35 35
Stress (MPa)

Stress (MPa)
30 30
25 25
20 20
15 15
10 10
5 5
0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
Strain (%) Strain (%)
(c) (d)

50 50
N=0 N=10 N=0 N=10
45 N=20 N=30 45 N=20 N=30
N=40 N=50 40 N=40 N=50
40
35 35
Stress (MPa)
Stress (MPa)

30 30
25 25
20 20
15 15
10 10
5 5
0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
Strain (%) Strain (%)
(e) (f)

50
N=0 N=10
45 N=20 N=30
N=40 N=50
40
35
Stress (MPa)

30
25
20
15
10
5
0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
Strain (%)
(g)
 Y. Liu et al.

Table 2 Change of UCS for red

sandstone with different degrees N Sr = 0% Sr = 30% Sr = 60% Sr = 70% Sr = 80% Sr = 90% Sr = 100%
of saturation (MPa)
0 42.3 35.5 28 28.2 31 26.3 26.6
10 41 35 28.1 21 26.2 24 25
20 38.8 34.8 26.5 20.9 24.9 22.6 18.6
30 39.1 31.6 23.2 21.2 18.1 16.7 15.8
40 35.2 27.5 21.6 16.6 18.4 15.5 14.2
50 32 26.8 21.3 14.6 16.6 14.5 12.3

The relation between predetermined mass of red sandstone Experimental results

samples and the specified saturation is
mt ¼ S r ðmsa −md Þ þ md ð1Þ
where mt is the mass corresponding to the specified saturation
Sr. Sr is the saturation of red sandstone. msa and md are the
mass of saturated and dry red sandstone, respectively.
Therefore, the specified saturations can be accurately derived
by continuous measurement of sample mass in the process of
dehydration. Dehydration process of saturated red sandstone is
shown in Fig. 1. It takes about 10 h to reach the saturation of
30%, and the rapid dehydration occurs in the first 10 h.
Experimental procedure
Firstly, the mineral composition of this red sandstone has been
identified through XRD test before freezing and thawing.
Figure 2 shows the test X-ray diffraction pattern of red sand-
stone. By analyzing these test results, the mineral components
of red sandstone mainly include feldspar (43.25%), quartz
(36.07%), calcite (9.44%), illite (7.24%), and chlorite (4%).
The illite and chlorite belong to clay mineral. Therefore, the
clay mineral content is about 11.24%. Then, all these rock
samples experienced 6 h of forced freezing at − 20 °C and
another 6 h of nature thawing at about 25 °C of room temper-
ature until the specified number of freeze-thaw cycles was
reached. The cooling rate is about 2.25 °C/min and the tem-
perature is measured at the center of the saturated sample as
shown in Fig. 3. During freeze-thaw, the P-wave velocities of
these red sandstone samples were tested every 5 freeze-thaw
Uniaxial compressive strength
The stress-strain curves of red sandstones without confined
pressure after 0~50 freeze-thaw cycles are presented in
Fig. 5. The strain was calculated by the vertical displacement
of the press head of the electro-hydraulic servo testing ma-
chine (Fig. 4). With the increasing of water content and
freeze-thaw cycles, the stress-strain curves tend to be flat.
Therefore, the strength and stiffness of red sandstone have
been decreased. The dried red sandstones are much harder
than the other red sandstones containing some water. The
variation of UCS for red sandstone with different saturations
after freeze-thaw is shown in Table 2. Obviously, not only the
freeze-thaw cycles but also the saturation degree has a signif-
icant influence on the UCS of red sandstone. When N = 0, the
UCS of dry sandstone is about 42.3 MPa while it is only
26.6 MPa for saturated sandstone without suffering freeze-
thaw damage. Therefore, more than 37% of UCS is decreased
by softening damage of water, but more than 90% of this UCS
loss occurs in the low saturation interval below 60%.
However, the loss ratio of UCS grows more quickly with the
increasing of freeze-thaw cycles when the saturation is beyond
60% (see Fig. 6). As the saturation degree is below 60%, it has
0.7
0%
30%
0.6 60%
70%
80%
0.5
90%
Loss ratio of UCS

100%
cycles by the RSM-SY5(T) nonmetal acoustic detector, 0.4
followed by the uniaxial compression experiments after
reaching the specified number of freeze-thaw cycles (0, 10, 0.3
20, 30, 40, and 50 cycles). All the sandstone samples were
subjected to uniaxial compression test on WAW-300 electro- 0.2

hydraulic servo testing machine and the displacement loading

0.1
mode was used with loading rate of 0.24 mm/min. The exper-
imental devices are shown in Fig. 4. The mean physic-
0.0
mechanical parameters of fresh red sandstone are given in 0 10 20 30 40 50
Table 1. Note that the nature status of sandstone was tested N
under the room temperature of about 25 °C and relative hu- Fig. 6 The loss ratio of UCS containing different water saturations after
midity of about 56%. freeze-thaw
Effect of water saturation on uniaxial compressive strength and damage degree of clay-bearing sandstone...

Table 3 Change of P-wave ve-

locity for red sandstone with dif- N Sr = 0% Sr = 30% Sr = 60% Sr = 70% Sr = 80% Sr = 90% Sr = 100%
ferent degree of saturation (m/s)
0 2532 2481 2564 2526 2581 2599 2703
5 2500 2422 2504 2381 2381 2439 2381
10 2400 2351 2439 2366 2326 2326 2326
15 2381 2323 2376 2332 2273 2222 2225
20 2372 2302 2372 2274 2274 2222 2175
25 2376 2293 2369 2273 2276 2222 1987
30 2381 2293 2339 2273 2233 2122 1852
35 2362 2272 2373 2204 2174 2022 1852
40 2321 2266 2341 2122 2074 2004 1786
45 2281 2242 2300 2104 2054 1928 1786
50 2273 2211 2273 2074 2028 1883 1754

little influence on the freeze-thaw damage because the UCS
loss of sandstone samples with different saturation is almost
the same. There is about 24% of UCS lost after 50 freeze-thaw
cycles as the saturation degree is below 60%. Nevertheless,
the losses of UCS are 48% and 54% for red sandstone with
70% and 100% degree of saturation after 50 cycles, respec-
tively. Besides, when Sr = 0, the UCS of dry sandstone has
decreased by 24.35% after 50 freeze-thaw cycles. This dam-
age is just caused by thermal fatigue because the sandstone is
dry. Therefore, thermal stress is also an important factor de-
creasing the strength of clay-bearing sandstone.
P-wave velocity and Young’s modulus
The change of P-wave velocities for red sandstone with differ-
ent saturations after freeze-thaw is shown in Table 3. They have
the similar rule with the change of UCS as shown in Fig. 7.
Beyond 60% degree of saturation, the P-wave velocity de-
creased more quickly under freeze-thaw. A clear demarcation
line can be found between 60 and 70% degree of saturation not
0.5
0%
30%
60%
0.4 70%
only for UCS loss but also for the loss of P-wave velocity (see
Figs. 6 and 7). Therefore, 60% may be a critical saturation for
red sandstone, which will be further validated in the next sec-
tion. However, the influence of water content on P-wave veloc-
ity is different from UCS in the absence of freeze-thaw. With
the increasing of water content, P-wave velocity increases grad-
ually. More and more voids are occupied by liquid water, which
can increase the velocity of P wave.
Besides, the elastic modulus is also an important mechan-
ical parameter reflecting the deformation characteristics of
rock. In this experiment, Young’s modulus, slope of the linear
segment of stress-strain curve, is chosen to describe the stiff-
ness of red sandstone under freeze-thaw. Figure 8 shows that
the elastic modulus has a clear trend of reduction with the
increasing of water saturation and freeze-thaw cycles although
there are some small fluctuations. Obviously, when Sr = 0 and
N ≤ 10, the elastic modulus of dry sandstone is much larger
than the others. Therefore, both water and freeze-thaw action
would soften the red sandstone greatly.
10
0% 30% 60%
70% 80% 90% 100%
8
Elastic modulus (GPa)

80%
90%
100% 6
Loss ratio of Vp

0.3

4
0.2

2
0.1

0.0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
N N
Fig. 7 The loss ratio of P-wave velocity containing different water satu- Fig. 8 The elastic modulus decreases with the increasing of freeze-thaw
rations after freeze-thaw cycles
 Y. Liu et al.

Fig. 9 The fragmentation distribution after freeze-thaw and uniaxial compression

Analysis of the freeze-thaw and water softening
mechanism
The fragmentation distributions of red sandstone after failure
are shown in Fig. 9. Due to the softening damage by water, the
degree of crushing raises with the increase of water content.
More rock debris can be found when the water saturation
exceeds 60%. Besides, the porosities of saturated and dried
rock have also been monitored during freeze-thaw cycles as
shown in Fig. 10. The porosities of fully saturated red sand-
stone increase while the porosities of dried red sandstone have
a slight decrease as freeze-thaw cycles increasing. It should be
noted that the porosities of dried specimens were derived by
the method of vacuum water absorption as the same as the
fully saturated specimens. After several porosity tests, the
pores of dried specimens may be reduced due to the irrevers-
ible expansion of some water-sensitive minerals, such as the
clay minerals. Therefore, the porosity of dried sandstone de-
creases slightly. As a result, the structure damage of saturated
red sandstone is much more serious than that of dried red
sandstone under freeze-thaw. Some macro freeze-thaw cracks
appear on the surface of saturated red sandstones after 50 cy-
that the mineral grains are closely bonded with each other
in dried red sandstone (Fig. 12a). However, the mineral
grains are pulled apart or broken in saturated rock after
several freeze-thaw cycles due to the repeated generation
and dissipation of frost heaving pressure and thermal
stress (Fig. 12b). In Fig. 12c, the ice crystals can be ob-
viously seen in cracks of saturated rock in the freezing
state. Therefore, the freeze-thaw damage process of clay-
bearing sandstone can be summarized as below (Fig. 13).
When the clay-bearing sandstone is saturated, water will
enter into the pores of rock and cause softening of clay min-
erals as well as some of the feldspar before freezing. Then, the
pore ice pressure, due to 9% volumetric expansion of pore
water under low temperature, will drive pores cracking when
17 Gk1 Gk2 Gk3
Sk1 Sk2 Sk3
Mean curve
16 Mean curve
15
Porosity (%)

cles (see Fig. 11).

14
Without doubt, the deterioration of these clay-bearing
sandstone samples is mainly caused by the coupled action
13
of freeze-thaw and water softening. When the temperature
drops below the freezing point of water, a frost heaving
12
pressure will arise due to the 9% volume expansion of
freezing water in pores and cracks, which should be re-
11
sponsible for the freeze-thaw damage of the rock. In order
0 10 20 30 40 50
to reveal the freeze-thaw and water softening mechanism, N
the microscopic structures of fully saturated and dried red
Fig. 10 Comparison of the porosities between fully saturated and dried
sandstone have also been observed using the VHX-5000 red sandstones under freeze-thaw (Sk1, Sk2, and Sk3 are fully saturated
digital microscopic system as shown in Fig. 12. It shows samples and Gk1, Gk2, and Gk3 are dried samples)
Effect of water saturation on uniaxial compressive strength and damage degree of clay-bearing sandstone...
the water content exceeds the critical saturation. After several
freeze-thaw cycles, new cracks are produced and the specimen
is significantly damaged. Figure 12b shows that the freeze-
thaw crack initiates inside the clay minerals and propagates
along the boundary of weather-resistant mineral grains, which
are mainly composed of quartz. However, many of the easily
weathered mineral grains are broken due to the propagation of
freeze-thaw cracks, including feldspar and calcite. For fully
saturated specimens, water will flow to the new cracks at
thawing state and ice crystals are produced in these cracks
during the next freezing. As a result, the cracks are expanded
under the combined action of ice pressure on the crack surface
and water softening of rock matrix.
However, the water softening mechanism is relatively com-
plicated. There are two main reasons for the softening damage
of red sandstone caused by the hydration action including
load-dependent damage and load-independent damage (Jia
et al. 2018). The lubrication occurs when the surface of the
clay particles is wetted, causing the mobility of the absorbed
film to increase due to increased thickness and greater surface
ion hydration and dissociation (Al-Shayea 2001). Therefore,
the lubrication action of unfrozen water will decrease the in-
ternal friction of rock matrix and friction of micro-cracks be-
cause water molecules can be occupied within clay layers
(Fig. 13). Jia et al. (2018) advocated that the lubrication action
was activated by load and this damage was reversible after
drying. The load-independent damage mainly refers to the
rock softening damage caused by chemical reaction including
hydration of clay minerals and dissolution of soluble minerals
(Hawkins and McConnell 1992; Erguler and Ulusay 2009).
Therefore, the load-independent damage of water softening is
irreversible. When the samples are saturated, the moisture can
easily enter into the pores especially for rock samples with a
higher content of clay mineral, because the clay mineral
Fig. 11 The macroscopic pictures
of fully saturated and dried red
sandstone after 50 cycles of
freeze-thaw (Gk, Sr = 0%; Sk,
Sr = 100%)
possesses large specific surface and strong hydrophilicity.
The water in clay minerals mainly includes interlayer water
and hydration water. The hydration water is accumulated on
the surface of clay minerals, and interlayer water is strongly
associated with interlayer cations and exists within the inter-
layer space (Cheng and Heidari 2017). The bonding of the
clay particles is very weak and clay interlayer can be separated
by strongly polarized water molecules with oxygen bond
(Zhao et al. 2007). As a result, the water will increase the
space between layers and cause the sandstone to swell and
soften (Wangler and Scherer 2008). In this red sandstone,
the main clay minerals are illite (7.24%) and chlorite (4%).
Therefore, the hydration of the red sandstone is mainly caused
by the hydration water.
As a result, the damage of clay-bearing red sandstone with
different saturations under freeze-thaw includes water soften-
ing damage followed by fatigue damage caused by freeze-
thaw action. Both of the water softening and freeze-thaw ac-
tion have the same responsibility for the reduction in strength
and deformability of red sandstone. However, the softening
damage caused by lubrication and water hydration action
mainly occurs in the low water content below 60% saturation
degree while the freeze-thaw fatigue damage grows more
quickly in the sandstone samples with saturation degree be-
yond 60%.
Damage evolution of clay-bearing red
sandstone under freeze-thaw
Freeze-thaw damage process and critical saturation
Many freeze-thaw damage models had been proposed
for evaluation of damage degree of different rocks under
 Y. Liu et al.

freeze-thaw in the past decades, mainly including decay
function model (Mutluturk et al. 2004; Altindag et al.
2004; Yavuz et al. 2006; Yavuz 2011; Bayram 2012; Ke
et al. 2018), fatigue damage evolution model (Liu et al.
2015; Jia et al. 2015; Huang et al. 2018a), and statisti-
cal damage model (İnce and Fener 2016; Fu et al.
2018). P-wave velocity, static elastic modulus, and po-
rosity were usually used to define damage variable as
the basic evaluation indexes (Remy et al. 1994; Takarli
et al. 2008; Jia et al. 2015). Ultrasonic wave velocity
(V p ) was found to be one of the best engineering
(physico-mechanical) parameters to indicate cyclic
freeze-thaw damage and predict the UCS of rocks (Liu
et al. 2015; Momeni et al. 2016). Therefore, the fatigue
damage evolution model firstly proposed by Liu et al.
(2015) is chosen to quantify the freeze-thaw fatigue
damage of red sandstone. The freeze-thaw damage var-
iable was defined by P-wave velocity as below:
2 Substituting P-wave velocities of red sandstone in
Vp
Dt ¼ 1−
V p0 2
where Dt is the freeze-thaw damage measured by exper-
iment. V p and Vp0 are the P-wave velocity of deterio-
rated red sandstone after freeze-thaw and fresh red sand-
stone, respectively.
The accumulated damage evolution function under freeze-
thaw is (Liu et al. 2015)
(
 )
N 1−a h 1
D ¼ 1− 1− 1−ð1−D f Þ1þb 1þb ð3Þ
Nf
where D is the estimating accumulated damage of red
sandstone under freeze-thaw. N is the freeze-thaw cycle
number. Nf is the maximum freeze-thaw number that the
specimens experience in experiment. Df is the last freeze-
thaw damage calculated from experimental P-wave veloc-
ity by Eq. (2). a and b are material parameters determined
by fitting the experimental damage values from Eq. (2).
Therefore, all the accumulated damage of rock, after any
freeze-thaw cycle smaller than Nf, can be derived if the P-
wave velocities of red sandstone under freeze-thaw are
measured. More details can be found in our previous lit-
erature (Liu et al. 2015).
ð2Þ Table 2 into Eq. (2), the relation between measured
freeze-thaw damage values with the degree of water sat-
uration can be derived as shown in Fig. 14. It shows that
the degree of saturation has little influence on the freeze-
thaw damage when Sr ≤ 60%. The water content is too low
to produce a remarkably frost heaving pressure during
freezing. However, if the saturation is beyond 60%, the

2000μm
2000μm
2000μm

feldspar
quartz

300μm
200μm
300μm
300μm

2000μm 2000μm
2000μm

150μm

300μm 300μm
300μm

(a) The thawing state of dried specimens (Sr=0%) (b) The thawing state of saturated specimens (Sr=100%) (c) The freezing state of saturated specimens (Sr=100%)

Fig. 12 The microscopic pictures of red sandstone after 50 cycles of freeze-thaw: a the thawing state of dried specimens (Sr = 0%); b the thawing state of
saturated specimens (Sr = 100%); c the freezing state of saturated specimens (Sr = 100%)
Effect of water saturation on uniaxial compressive strength and damage degree of clay-bearing sandstone...

Fig. 13 Water softening and freeze-thaw damage process of clay-bearing red sandstone (pic and piv are ice pressure in crack and pores, respectively)

freeze-thaw damage increases quickly with the increasing Improved freeze-thaw damage model considering
of saturation. Therefore, at least 60% saturation is needed water saturation
if the red sandstone is significantly damaged by freeze-
thaw action. The critical saturation is about 60% for this As shown in Table 4, the change of material parameter a with
high porosity red sandstone. the degree of water saturation is smaller compared with the
The accumulated damage evolution equation of red sand- change of material parameter b. The maximum and minimum
stone is determined by fitting the experimental damage values values of a are 0.74 and 0.57, respectively. However, the ma-
of red sandstone with different degrees of saturation, as shown terial parameter b has a great decrease with the increase in
in Fig. 15. Therefore, Eq. (3) can well estimate the freeze-thaw degree of water saturation. It is about b = 9.21 for dry red
damage degree of red sandstone under different saturations. sandstone while b = 0 for saturated red sandstone. In order to
The material parameters a and b of red sandstone under dif- derive the correlations between these two material parameters
ferent saturations can be found in Table 4. and saturation, a parameter sensitivity analysis has been con-
ducted for a and b at Sr = 70% as shown in Figs. 16 and 17.
Figure 16 shows that the change of a from 0.57 to
0.8
N=50 0.8
0.7 N=40 Sr=0% Sr=30% Sr=60% Sr=70%
N=30 0.7 Sr=80% Sr=90% Sr=100%
0.6 N=20
N=10 0.6
0.5
0.5
Dt

0.4
Dt

0.4

0.3
0.3

0.2
0.2

0.1
0.1

0.0
0.0
0 20 40 60 80 100
0 10 20 30 40 50
Sr(%) N
Fig. 14 The change of accumulated freeze-thaw damage of red sandstone Fig. 15 The accumulated freeze-thaw damage of red sandstone under
with degree of saturation different saturations
 Y. Liu et al.

Table 4 Change of material

parameters a and b for red Sr = 0% Sr = 30% Sr = 60% Sr = 70% Sr = 80% Sr = 90% Sr = 100%
sandstone with different degree of
saturations a 0.72 0.6 0.64 0.74 0.7 0.58 0.57
b 9.21 2.90 4.05 5.78 3.0 1.41 0

approximately 0.74 has a very smaller influence on the accu-
mulated damage evolution of red sandstone compared with
the change of b from 0 to approximately 9.21 (Fig. 17).
When a is 0.57~0.74, the maximum difference of calculated
damage is smaller than 0.05 and it decreases with the increas-
ing of freeze-thaw cycles as shown in Fig. 18. Besides, the
correlation between a and Sr is not obvious. Therefore, it can
be assumed that a is independent of water saturation. The
mean value of a is about 0.65 from Table 4. Then, parameter
b can also be determined by fitting the experimental results
from Fig. 19. Figure 20 shows that b linearly decreases with
the increasing of saturation as below:
b ¼ 6:63−5:6S r
Substituting Eq. (4) into Eq. (3), the final accumulated
damage function of red sandstone considering the influence
of water saturation can be expressed as
(
 )
N 0:35 h
1
7:63−5:6S r 7:63−5:6S
D ¼ 1− 1− 1−ð1−D f Þ r ð5Þ
Nf
Therefore, the freeze-thaw damage of clay-bearing red
sandstone under different saturations can well satisfy the evo-
lution function of fatigue damage.
Estimating the UCS of red sandstone using this
improved model
P-wave velocity is a reliable and easily accessible indicator for
predicting the UCS loss of nearly all rocks under freeze-thaw.
The estimated equation can be written as (Liu et al. 2015):
σc ¼ σ0 ð1−DÞ
UCSs are in good agreement with the experimental UCS for
any degree of saturation. Therefore, the UCS of these clay-
bearing sandstones can be well estimated by Eq. (7) after any
freeze-thaw cycle. This fatigue damage function has consid-
ered not only the freeze-thaw cycles but also the degree of
saturation. Only if the P-wave velocity of last freeze-thaw
cycle is tested, the damage degree and UCS of this red sand-
stone can accurately be estimated.
Discussion and conclusion
ð4Þ The water content and freeze-thaw cycles are major factors
lowering the strength of clay-bearing rocks. By increasing
the water content and freeze-thaw cycles, the clay-bearing
rocks show great reductions in strength and the modulus of
elasticity (Erguler and Ulusay 2009; Khanlari and Abdilor
2015). Clay-bearing sandstones are widely occupied on the
surface of the earth in cold regions. The deterioration of
clay-bearing sandstone under coupled freeze-thaw and water
softening action brings great security risks to the clay-bearing
rock engineering in cold regions (Wang et al. 2016). However,
the effect of water saturation on the physic-mechanical prop-
erties of clay-bearing rocks under freeze-thaw has not been
fully considered in previous studies. In this study, the influ-
ences of saturation degree and freeze-thaw cycles on the UCS
and damage degree of clay-bearing red sandstone were inves-
tigated by experiment and theoretical analysis. Although the
influential mechanisms of water softening and freeze-thaw
0.5
70% b=5.78
a=0.54 a=0.58 a=0.62
a=0.66 a=0.70 a=0.74
ð6Þ 0.4
a=0.78

Substituting Eq. (5) into Eq. (6), the final prediction equa- 0.3
tion of UCS for red sandstone under freeze-thaw considering
Dt

the influence of water saturation is

0.2
(
0:35 h ) 1
N i 7:63−5:6Sr
σc ¼ σ0 1− 1−ð1−D f Þ7:63−5:6S r ð7Þ
Nf 0.1

The estimated UCSs of red sandstone under freeze-thaw by

0.0
Eq. (7) are compared with the experimental UCS in Fig. 21. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
The change curves of UCS with different saturations from N
Eq. (7) are in accordance with the experimental values after Fig. 16 The accumulated freeze-thaw damage of red sandstone with dif-
any freeze-thaw cycle. Figure 22 also shows that the estimated ferent a
Effect of water saturation on uniaxial compressive strength and damage degree of clay-bearing sandstone...

0.5 0.8
Sr=70% a=0.74 Sr=0% Sr=30% Sr=60% Sr=70%
0.7 Sr=80% Sr=90% Sr=100%
b=0 b=2 b=4 b=5.78
0.4 b=8 b=10 b=12
0.6
b=0.52

0.3
0.5 b=2.13

b=2.24

Dt
0.4
Dt

0.2 b=3
0.3
b=3.3
0.2 b=4.43
0.1 b=6.86
0.1

0.0 0.0
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
N N
Fig. 17 The accumulated freeze-thaw damage of red sandstone with dif- Fig. 19 The accumulated damage increases with water saturation and
ferent b freeze-thaw cycles

damage are different, both the damage degrees are great and
should be considered. More than 37% of UCS decreases by
water softening and about 54% of UCS is lost due to freeze-
thaw for saturated red sandstone.
The influence of the water saturation on the deterioration
mechanism of this red sandstone can also be attributed to the
water-weakening and freeze-thaw damage. There are two
types of hydration reactions of clay minerals, the surface hy-
dration between the clay particles and osmotic hydration in the
intergranular layer of clay particles. In this red sandstone, the
main clay minerals are illite (7.24%) and chlorite (4%), which
have a small expansibility. Therefore, the water hydration of
this red sandstone is mainly caused by the adsorbed water,
which accumulates on the external surface of these clay min-
erals. With the increasing of water saturation in the clay-
bearing sandstone, the mobility of the absorbed film on the
surface of clay particles increases and the slip between clay
particles is easier under pressure (Al-Shayea 2001). Besides,
the increasing water will promote the hydration reaction of the
clay minerals and reduced the internal friction of sandstone.
Therefore, the UCSs of this clay-bearing sandstone decrease
with increasing the water saturation. Besides, the frost heaving
pressure also increases with increasing water saturation under
freezing, when it is beyond the critical values, about 60% for
this red sandstone. The frost heave will not occur in rock with
low water content (Prick 1995). Accordingly, a more serious
freeze-thaw damage will be produced in these red sandstones
with higher water saturation.
Considering the influence of water saturation, a developed
fatigue damage model firstly given by Liu et al. (2015) is
adopted to quantify the degree of freeze-thaw damage com-
bining with P-wave velocity in this research. This new model
is proved to be accurate quantification of the damage degree
and estimating UCS loss of unsaturated sandstone after any
freeze-thaw cycle, in comparison with the experimental
8
Calculated b
7
Fitting line

4
b

b=6.63-5.6Sr
3
R2=0.96
2

0
0 20 40 60 80 100

Sr(%)
Fig. 18 The maximum difference of accumulated damage decreases with
freeze-thaw cycles Fig. 20 Change of b with the degree of saturation
 Y. Liu et al.

60
0% 30% 60% 70%
less than 60%, it has little effect on freeze-thaw damage.
80% 90% 100% About 24% of UCS is lost after 50 cycles of freeze-thaw.
50 0% 30% 60% 70% The freeze-thaw damage increases quickly with the in-
80% 90% 100%
creasing of freeze-thaw cycles as the saturation is beyond
40 60%. Therefore, 60% may be regarded as the critical sat-
UCS (MPa)

uration of this clay-bearing red sandstone.

30 3. The damage of this clay-bearing red sandstone is caused
by the coupled action of water weakening and freeze-
20
thaw. Combining with the developed fatigue damage
model, P-wave velocity can be used to accurately estimate
the UCS of these red sandstones with different saturations
10
after any freeze-thaw cycle.

0 Funding information This work was supported by the National Natural

0 10 20 30 40 50
Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41702291), the Open Fund of
N
Key Laboratory for Bridge and Tunnel of Shaanxi Province (Grant No.
Fig. 21 The UCS of red sandstone containing different water saturation 300102219529), and the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province
after any freeze-thaw (No. 2015CFA142).

results. Actually, the freeze-thaw damage of clay-bearing

sandstone is the result from frost cracking of void and hydra-
tion of clay minerals under coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical
fields (Huang et al. 2018b). The fully coupled thermo-hydro-
mechanical process of unsaturated clay-bearing rocks under
freeze-thaw should be studied further. Anyhow, this research
has made significant contributions to the understanding of
coupled freeze-thaw and water-weakening damage of clay-
bearing rocks. Above all, the following conclusions can be
drawn from this study:
1. The water saturation has a considerable influence on the
UCS and P wave of clay-bearing sandstones. More than
37% of UCS has been lost due to hydration action.
However, most of the UCS loss caused by water weaken-
ing occurs at the low degree of saturation less than 60%.
2. The UCS of wet red sandstone has also greatly decreased
due to freeze-thaw action. When the saturation degree is
50
45 0% 30%
80% 90%
40
y=x
Measured UCS (MPa)
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