M.B.

Dusseault, Earth 437

STRENGTH AND YIELD 1.0 INTRODUCTION (review)

Definitions of strength & yield criteria; peak strength and ultimate strength Strength has many definitions: -Peak shearing resistance, peak bending resistance -Peak resistance to tensile stresses, resistance to torsion -Strength may refer to resistance to blasting or grinding -Strength is often simply used in a comparative sense (diorites are generally stronger than limestones). Before you ask for some strength information in a design process, make sure that you understand clearly what type of strength you need and the scale at which it is required.

1.1

The difference between yield and failure: Yield is a sudden change in the ability of the rock to take more load, and this change arises because of damage to the rock fabric (microfissuring, grain collapse, pore collapse, grain boundary sliding, etc.). Yield does not imply failure. For example, around all deep boreholes the rock is yielded, but the borehole continues to fulfil its function. Yield can be a sudden drop in the stress-strain curve, or a sudden change in the load acceptance curve for a material. Yield may arise because of increased deviatoric stresses, as in the case of a rock specimen being triaxially sheared, as the result of increased mean stresses, as in the case of a coal crushed under hydrostatic stresses. as the result of increase tensile stresses, as in the case of a rock massively cooled as geothermal heat is extracted. Increased deviatoric stresses will damage the rock fabric far more than a pure tensile stress, causing a lot of grain debonding and dilation. The tensile stress often creates only a single planar fracture with little damage to the adjacent rock material. Failure is a loss of function. For example, if a dam is designed to hold back water, but it is impossible to fill the reservoir, then the dam can truly be said to have failed despite the fact that it is completely intact from a strength point of view. All tunnels in jointed rock at depth show rock yield and spalling around the openings, particularly of they are rectangular, but the tunnels stay stable and open, therefore they are not failing. In simple laboratory tests, such as the triaxial or the uniaxial compressive tests, the rocks yield and we call it failure as well.

1.2

Residual mineral strength and ultimate rock mass strength Residual strength is a geotechnical term from soils mechanics, and is properly used to refer to the lowest shearing resistance displayed by a monomineralic material (this constraint is usually relaxed considerably) after large shear deformations. It is associated with the minimum resistance of shales and clays after slickensiding, large shear deformations along a weak surface, slip along a fault, etc. The residual strength is supposedly independent of the stress-strain history of the material, but this is only valid for soil-type materials. Rock cannot be looked on in this relatively simple manner. Once a rock yields and damage continues to accumulate, the lowest shearing resistance is not a function of the mineralogy, but is more related to the nature in which failure took place, the size and granulation of the fractured, damaged zone, the roughness of the shearing plane, etc. To a considerable degree, the ultimate strength of a rock depends on the stress path required to reach that condition, and is usually intimately related to the joints and discontinuities.

Consider the ultimate strength of an intact specimen of drill core 100 mm in diameter, damaged and yielded by straining in a triaxial cell. The straining is continued to 10-11% strain (the rock failed at 0.55% strain). Now consider the ultimate strength of a jointed, fissured rock mass of several thousand cubic metres which contains no joint blocks larger than 0.2 m 3. Can we compare the two cases? Are the ultimate strengths the same?

1.3

Failure modes Because we are referring to failure modes, this must be a macroscopic feature of the rock, not a test in the laboratory. The major failure modes are: tensile, bending, buckling, toppling, shearing, crushing. In fact, most processes of large scale yield and failure usually include at least two of these mechanisms. Near the surface of the earth, particularly in the stronger rocks and under modest stress conditions, rocks fail in tensile modes , even though you might think that shear is the dominant process. The process that allows a failure plane to develop through a landslide mass, for example, is tensile rupture and the dilation and development of a plane along which shear can eventually take place. Even at a microscopic level, the damage that occurs in rock during and after yield is related to microfissuring, leading to grain debonding, dilation, and eventually, after 1% to 1.5% strain, to a granulated material in which shear is kinematically possible. If you carefully and microscopically examine the progressive development of a shear plane in an intact rock, you will notice: -Acoustic emissions characteristic of tensile microfissuring. -Dilation, implying development of porous space by fissure growth. -Microfissures, usually along grain boundaries oriented approximately normal to 3. -An increase in permeability in the damaging zone, perhaps by several orders of magnitude -Stiffness decrease as damage progresses, reflecting increased porosity and debonding -Other, related phenomena

1.4

Yield criterion -A yield criterion is a set of mathematical rules telling you when a material will yield. A yield criterion for a particular rock material should, in principal, take into account the direction in which the stresses are applied and the fabric and anisotropy of the rock. In practice, this is extremely difficult to do well, and careful engineering judgement is needed at all points in the process of evaluating the yield behaviour or a rock. -The lectures will try and answer a set of questions relating to yield. *Strength & yield criteria in 2-D stress space (-n' and p-q diagrams) *What is a yield criterion? Shear, tension, cohesive strength, or all together? *Are the yield surfaces constant? *What is a Mohr-Coulomb material? *Why are yield criteria curvilinear? *Anisotropy in yield parameters, particularly in tensile strength.

Taken from the Synopsis TESTING TO DEFINE STRENGTH & YIELD CRITERIA ON INTACT ROCK Uniaxial, biaxial, polyaxial, hydrostatic compression tests Axisymmetric triaxial test, continuous failure state testing

Effect of scale on strength, large scale triaxial tests in the laboratory Direct & indirect tensile tests, beam bending, torsion and hollow cylinder tests The problem with defining tensile strength of a lab specimen and comparing to the mass TESTS TO DEFINE SHEAR STRENGTH & YIELD CRITERIA FOR DISCONTINUITIES Tilt tests on blocks & core, rock-to-rock surface required Triaxial testing of discontinuities - limitations Sampling of jointed rock & filling materials, taking and testing replicas Direct shear test with laboratory & field-portable apparatus In situ tests on blocks, slopes and underground testing Estimating shear strength from back analysis FACTORS AFFECTING STRENGTH OF ROCKS The effects of increasing normal stress on porous and non-porous rocks Moisture conditions and its effect on strength (tensile fissure Dilatant behaviour & i-angle, curvilinear criteria overview, scale & roughness effects Scale & roughness effects on strength of a rock joint; effects of infillings on joint strength Joint creep, and the effect of strain rate on joint strength STRENGTH AND YIELD CRITERIA Shear strength criteria, Mohr-Coulomb strengths of joints and fillings Attributes of the strength surface Mohr-Coulomb criterion, Griffith criterion and extensions Curvilinear criteria, overview : Ladanyi and Archambault, Barton Empirical criteria: Hoek and Brown, Johnston BRITTLE BEHAVIOUR (FRACTURE) OF ROCKS Crack initiation & propagation, Griffith crack theory, extensional strain fracture criteria Modes of rupture & yield associated with brittle behaviour and different stresses "Flaking" of rock in a stressed vertical wall, longitudinal fractures parallel to pillar surfaces A proposed mechanism for rock bursting Fracture toughness tests for fracture mechanics Mechanisms of brittle rupture in blasting, hydraulic fracture **A detailed assignment on Strength of Rocks and Joints: yield criteria, interpretation of triaxial and direct shear tests, etc., will be based in part on these three parts of the discussion of Yield in Rocks.