Ringlike failure experiment of thick-walled limestone cylinder specimens in triaxial unloading tests

In order to study the failure of surrounding rock under high in situ stress in deep underground engineering projects, disturbed by excavation unloading, we carried out triaxial unloading experiments using thickwalled cylinder specimens on a TATW-2000 rock servo-controlled triaxial testing machine in a laboratory. The specimens were made of limestone material, taken from Tongshan county, Xuzhou city, Jiangsu province, China. In our experiments, rock deformation and failure behavior was studied through loading and unloading of inner hole pressure of thick-walled cylinder specimens. At first, the axial stress, confining pressure and inner pressure were increased simultaneously to a specified designed state of stress. Then, keeping the axial stress and confining pressure stable, the pressure on the inner hole was decreased until the specimen was fractured. When the inner pressure was released completely but the specimen did not fracture, the confining pressure was decreased subsequently until complete failure occurred. Our experimental results suggest that traces of major circular ringlike fractures with a number of radial cracks often appear in thick cylinder walls. This type of ringlike failure phenomenon, similar to intermittent zonal fracturing characteristics of deep exploitation, has, so far, not been published. Our experimental results show that rock deformation and failure behavior of thick-walled limestone cylinders vary under different stress paths between loading and unloading. Tensile failure and orderly failure surfaces occur under unloading conditions while irregular damaged rock blocks are produced during loading failure. This type of triaxial unloading experiment provides for new research methodology and approach for thorough investigations on intermittent zonal fracturing in deep underground excavations.

Research on testing method of resin sand high temperature compressive strength

High temperature compressive strength is one of the most important performances of resin sand; its value directly concerns the quality of castings. In order to seek the best testing method of resin sand high temperature compressive strength, a self-developed instrument was used to carry out experiments, and the sample shape and size were designed and studied. The results show that a hollow cylinder sample can reflect the strength difference of different resin sands better than a solid cylinder sample, and its data is stable. The experiments selected φ20/5×30 mm as the size of the hollow cylinder samples. The high temperature compressive strengths of phenol-formaldehyde resin coated sand, furan resin self-setting sand, and TEA resin sand were each tested. For the resin sand used for cast steel and cast iron, 1,000 ℃ was selected as the test temperature; for the resin sand used for cast non-ferrous alloy, 800 ℃ was selected as the test temperature; and for all the resin sand samples, 1 min was selected as the holding time. This testing method can truthfully reflect the high temperature performance of three kinds of resin sand; it is reproducible, and the variation coefficients of test values are under 10%.