Strength Deterioration Characteristics of Soft and Hard Interbedded Rock Masses in Three Gorges Reservoir Area Induced by Wetting-Drying Cycles

Abstract

The rock masses in the hydro-fluctuation zone of reservoir banks sustain wetting-drying cycles (WDC), thereby affecting the stability of the reservoir bank slope. In this paper, rock masses with argillaceous siltstone and silty mudstone interbedded in Badong Formation were taken as the research object to investigate the variation of strength parameters of soft and hard interbedded rock masses with WDC and dip angle through laboratory experiments and numerical experiments. Some attempts were made to reveal the mechanical properties deterioration mechanism of interbedded rock masses by quantitatively analyzing the contribution of strength parameters deterioration of hard rocks, soft rocks, and bedding planes to the strength parameters deterioration of rock masses. The results indicate that the logarithmic function could be used to describe the deterioration of each strength parameter of both argillaceous siltstone and silty mudstone and bedding plane with the number of WDC. The strength parameters of interbedded rock masses decrease as the number of WDC increases, with the largest decrease after the first cycle and then slowing down in the later cycles. The strength parameters initially decrease and then increase as the dip angles increase. The impact of deteriorated strength parameters of bedding planes and rocks on the deterioration of strength parameters of interbedded rock masses differs significantly with the dip angle, which can be divided into four typical ranges of different controlling factors.

Keywords

strength deterioration / wetting-drying cycles / soft and hard interbedded rock mass / numerical simulations / contribution degree / engineering geology

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