Experimental study on mechanical behavior and microscopic damage evolution of sandstone subjected to freeze-thaw cycles

Abstract

To investigate the damage characteristics of sandstone in geotechnical engineering in cold regions under long-term freeze-thaw actions, uniaxial compression tests were conducted on sandstone under different freeze-thaw cycles. During the tests, acoustic emission (AE) monitoring was employed to track changes in AE signals throughout the process, while nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) was used to analyze pore structure variations in the freeze-thaw sandstone, and a wave velocity tester was applied to measure the wave velocity of sandstone after freeze-thaw damage. The results indicate that as the number of freeze-thaw cycles increases, the peak strength, elastic modulus, and wave velocity of sandstone decrease linearly, while porosity increases linearly. With increasing freeze-thaw cycles, the total energy, elastic energy, and dissipated energy decrease, with the proportion of elastic energy diminishing, making it more prone to transformation into dissipated energy. Sandstone subjected to higher numbers of freeze-thaw cycles exhibits more intense and pronounced AE ring-down counts and AE energy signals, while the correlation dimension gradually decreases. From the perspective of phase space dimension, higher numbers of freeze-thaw cycles lead to reduced convergence of the correlation dimension, and the time series of AE ring-down counts shifts from an ordered sequence to a random sequence, indicating increased disorder in crack development. Based on fractal theory, a damage model linking porosity and strength was established, and a correlated damage model integrating elastic modulus, wave velocity, energy, and strength was further developed. The research findings provide theoretical support for exploring the mechanical behavior of fractured rock masses in cold region engineering.

Keywords

Freeze-thaw cycles / Nuclear magnetic resonance / Acoustic emission / Energy / Damage mechanism / Fractal theory

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