Water effects on rocks

Abstract

In engineering practice, it was found that the mechanical properties of rocks after being saturated by water will decline significantly compared with that when it is dry. This phenomenon has a significant impact on the safety of engineering and the selection of construction techniques. Therefore, engineers and scientists also attach great importance to this phenomenon. Over the past few decades, researchers have conducted extensive experiments and researches on various types of rocks regarding the weakening of mechanical properties caused by the increase in water content in rocks. In extensive research, researchers have found that this phenomenon is influenced by many factors, such as the type of rock, porosity, texture, and so on. When reading literature from other researchers, it was found that the standards researchers used to conduct experiments were different. Some strictly follow the standards of authoritative institutions such as ISRM and ASTM, while others set their own experimental conditions based on their own experimental goals.Different experimental standards and conditions used by researchers in rock mechanics experiments will also affect the experimental results and conclusions drawn by researchers. This article is a summary of previous research. I will use the method of literature review and data analysis to analyse the relevant data in 60 relevant papers from 2015 to 2023. The main achievement of this dissertation consists of two parts. The first part is a summary of the principles and mechanisms of the influence of water on rock mechanical properties in previous studies. The second part compares the reduction of different types of rocks, the distribution of reduction of the same type of rock, and the impact of experimental factors on results through data analysis.