Experimental Study on Mechanical Properties of Gas Storage Sandstone under Water Content

In order to investigate the influence of water content on the damage and degradation characteristics of Hutubi sandstone, different saturation experiments and laboratory mechanical experiments were carried out on Hutubi sandstone. The experimental results show that under uniaxial and triaxial conditions, with the increase in water content, the axial, lateral, and volume deformations gradually increase, and the deformation shows obvious dilatancy characteristics. The deviator stress and elasticity modulus of the sandstone decreased exponentially with the increasing water content. Confining pressure has a significant effect on the strength improvement of sandstone under the constant water content. Based on lognormal distribution, the damage constitutive model of sandstone which can reflect both uniaxial and triaxial condition with different water contents was proposed. The theoretical curves were compared with the experimental curves, and it was found that the theoretical curves and the experimental curves have similar changing trends. It shows the rationality of the statistical damage constitutive model.

A Statistical Damage Constitutive Model of Anisotropic Rock: Development and Validation

The damage constitutive model is of great significance to research the stress-strain relationship and damage evolution of rock under loading in engineering. In order to investigate the effect of anisotropic characteristic on the stress-strain relationship and damage evolution, a statistical damage constitutive model of anisotropic rock under true triaxial condition was developed. In this study, the plane which existed perpendicular to the coordinate axis was extracted from representative volume element (RVE) of rock. The extracted plane was assumed to be composed of abundant mesoscopic elements whose failure strength satisfied the Weibull distribution. According to the number of failure elements on the plane in each direction under loading, the anisotropic damage variable was established based on the proposed concept of areal damage. A statistical damage constitutive model of anisotropic rock was developed by using strain equivalent hypothesis and generalized Hooke constitutive model. Subsequently, the parameters in the anisotropic damage constitutive model were determined by the method of total differential. Thus, the damage evolution of anisotropic rock under various stress conditions can be conveniently evaluated by the anisotropic damage model. The model was validated based on the tests of rocks under the stress conditions of conventional triaxial and true triaxial, respectively. Moreover, for the purpose of studying the influence of parameters on the model, sensitivity analyses of mechanical parameters and model parameters were carried out. The results of statistical damage constitutive clearly demonstrate the stress-strain and damage evolution of anisotropic rock under various stress conditions.

A Nonlinear Statistical Damage Constitutive Model for Porous Rocks

In the current paper, the deformation behaviours of rocks during compression are studied by testing 10 groups of sandstone samples with different porosity characteristics. According to the energy theory, the rock material was divided into two parts: solid skeleton and voids. A statistical damage-based approach was adopted to establish a nonlinear statistical damage constitutive model. The validity of the statistical damage constitutive model is verified by the test data. The statistical damage constitutive model performs well in each stage of rock compression before failure. For different types of rocks, different confining pressures, and different water contents, the statistical damage constitutive model fits well. This model can be applied to most types of rocks and in most engineering environments.

The Statistical Damage Constitutive Model of the Mechanical Properties of Alkali-Resistant Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Alkali-resistant glass fiber reinforced concrete (AR-GFRC) has greatly improved in terms of tensile strength, toughness, durability, and reduction of cracking, which has been proven by testing. However, the constitutive relationship of fiber reinforced concrete under complicated stress represents a complex theoretical problem. In order to investigate the microscopic damage evolution and failure mechanism of AR-GFRC, the meso-statistical damage theory, microcontinuum theory, and composite material theory were considered, and uniaxial tensile tests of two types of AR-GFRC were conducted. A new damage variable expression of the AR-GFRC was proposed, and the stress-strain curve was redefined by considering the residual strength based on experimental fitting parameters and statistical parameters. A Weibull distribution was assumed and a statistical damage constitutive model was developed of the deformation process of the AR-GFRC while considering the residual strength effect; detailed calculation methods to determine the mechanical and statistical parameters of the concrete were developed. The validation results show that the theoretical stress-strain curve of the constitutive model is in good agreement with the experimental curve and the trend is consistent.