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PETROGRAPHIC REPORT
ON A ROCK SAMPLE
FROM LOCKYER QUARRY
prepared for
Purchase Order:
Issued By:
Work Requested Petrographic analysis in relation to suitability for use as concrete aggregate, road base,
rail ballast, marine armour, sealing aggregate, in asphalt and rip rap; petrographic
assessment of potential for alkali-silica reactivity
Methods Account taken of ASTM C 295 Standard Guide for Petrographic Assessment of
Aggregates for Concrete, the AS2758.1 – 2014 Aggregates and rock for engineering
purposes part 1; Concrete aggregates (Appendix B), the AS1141 Standard Guide for
the Method for sampling and testing aggregates, of the content of the 1996 joint
publication of the Cement and Concrete Association of Australia and Standards
Australia, (HB 79-1996) entitled Alkali Aggregate Reaction - Guidelines on
Minimising the Risk of Damage to Concrete Structures in Australia, and in
accordance with ASTM C 294 Standard Guide for Petrographic Assessment of
Railway Ballast and to the content of the 2015 publication of Standards Australia (AS
2758.7 – Appendix B), entitled Aggregates and Rock for Engineering Purposes- Part
7: Railway Ballast, and in accordance with ASTM C1721-09 Standard Guide for
Petrographic Assessment of Dimension Stone, and in accordance with ASTM D4992-
07 Standard Guide for Evaluation of Rock to be used for Erosion Control.
Description
The sample consisted of a rock spall of fairly clean, robust, hard, dark-grey, slightly weathered, finely
crystalline basalt with open to zeolite filled vesicles. The basalt contains some larger olivine xenocrysts
which are slightly altered.
A thin section was prepared to permit detailed examination in transmitted polarised light of the rock. An
approximate average mineralogical composition of the rock, expressed in volume percent and based on a
brief count of 100 widely spaced points falling within the sectioned rock, is:
Primary minerals
Secondary minerals
Microscopically the rock is seen to consist of basalt with xenocrystal, porphyritic, hypidiomorphic and
intergranular, finely holocrystalline textures.
The finely crystalline rock shows olivine phenocrysts and xenocrysts (around 0.5 to 5 mm) and smaller
groundmass grains of olivine showing light to moderate alteration to green clays of smectite style around
rims and along internal fractures.
The groundmass consists of slightly flow-aligned, small laths of fresh plagioclase feldspar (mainly about
0.05 to 0.5 mm long), abundant prisms of fresh, faintly brownish clinopyroxene, common equant grains
of fresh opaque oxide (magnetite and ilmenite), inconspicuous acicular prisms of apatite and in some
cases quite minor interstitial greenish-brown clay. Xenocrysts of olivine display corroded edges abd
patches of fine reaction pyroxenes.
The vesicles in the hand specimen were not well intersected in the thin section which is a random slice of
the rock, the vesicles sometimes contain zeolite.
This sample of rock from Lockyer quarry – near chute is identified as xenocrystal, holocrystalline olivine
basalt, a basic volcanic rock type. The rock has texture and composition consistent with derivation from a
lava flow (perhaps representing basalt from the edges of a thick flow or dyke or sill). It shows slight
deuteric alteration which has generated greenish-brown clay of smectite style and some zeolite is present
in vesicles.
For engineering purposes, the rock represented in the supplied sample may be summarised as:
The rock lacks free silica, therefore, it is predicted to be innocuous in relation to alkali-silica reactivity
in concrete.
In short, basalt of the types represented in the supplied aggregate sample is predicted to be suitable for
use in concrete aggregate, road base, rail ballast, sealing aggregate and in asphalt.
The rock is predicted to be suitable for use as marine armour rock and rip rap provided blocks free of
abundant jointing can be quarried.
Apparently nil.
Figure 2. Low magnification, cross polarised, transmitted light image of the basalt. There is abundant
clinopyroxene in the groundmass along with common phenocrysts of related pyroxene and olivine. Grey
lathes represent plagioclase.