Studies on the Mechanical Properties of Dry, Saturated, and Frozen Marls Using Destructive and Non-destructive Laboratory Approaches

Abstract

The mechanical properties of frozen rocks vary significantly from the properties of the same lithology under ambient temperature. The goal of this paper is to investigate these changes in the physical and mechanical properties of rocks due to saturation and freezing. Besides, the attention was paid on discovering new correlations between the mechanical characteristics. To fulfill these objectives, 36 uniaxial compressive strength tests, 36 Brazilian splitting tests, and 48 point load tests were carried out. The samples were tested in air dry, water saturated, and frozen (− 20 °C) conditions. The measured physical and mechanical parameters were analyzed by using regression analyses. It was found that the average uniaxial compressive strength of frozen samples (21.93 MPa) is 86.4% more than saturated ones (11.76 MPa) but 25.9% less than dry specimens (29.62 MPa). Additionally, high correlations were established between uniaxial compressive strength and IS(50) under air-dry, saturated, and frozen conditions for the investigated marl samples. Furthermore, it is of particular interest to observe a high correlation with the determination coefficient (R2 = 0.95) between the constants of previously published linear regressions of UCS- Is(50) under dry status.