Hydraulic Characteristics of Rough Fractures in Linear Flow under Normal and Shear Load |
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| Authors: | H S Lee T F Cho |
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| Institution: | (1) School of Civil, Urban and Geosystem Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, KR;(2) Department of Exploration Engineering, College of Environmental and Marine Science and Technology, Pukyong National University, Pusan, Korea, KR |
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| Abstract: | Summary
A hydro-mechanical testing system, which is capable of measuring both the flow rates and the normal and shear displacement
of a rock fracture, was built to investigate the hydraulic behaviour of rough tension fractures. Laboratory hydraulic tests
in linear flow were conducted on rough rock fractures, artificially created using a splitter under various normal and shear
loading. Prior to the tests, aperture distributions were determined by measuring the topography of upper and lower fracture
surfaces using a laser profilometer. Experimental variograms of the initial aperture distributions were classified into four
groups of geostatistical model, though the overall experimental variograms could be well fitted to the exponential model.
The permeability of the rough rock fractures decayed exponentially with respect to the normal stress increase up to 5 MPa.
Hydraulic behaviours during monotonic shear loading were significantly affected by the dilation occurring until the shear
stress reached the peak strength. With the further dilation, the permeability of the rough fracture specimens increased more.
However, beyond shear displacement of about 7 to 8 mm, permeability gradually reached a maximum threshold value. The combined
effects of both asperity degradation and gouge production, which prohibited the subsequent enlargement of mean fracture aperture,
mainly caused this phenomenon. Permeability changes during cyclic shear loading showed somewhat irregular variations, especially
after the first shear loading cycle, due to the complex interaction from asperity degradations and production of gouge materials.
The relation between hydraulic and mechanical apertures was analyzed to investigate the valid range of mechanical apertures
to be applied to the cubic law.
Received June 12, 2001; accepted February 26, 2002 Published online September 2, 2002 |
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