Abstract
With the demand for many engineering facilities on coral reefs, it is urgent to study the physical and mechanical properties of reef limestone to meet the needs of coral reef construction. In this paper, real-time high-resolution X-ray micro-CT was used to scan reef limestone sample experimentally under unconfined axial compression for the first time. The rock samples from 286 m below sea level in S Reef were made into cylindrical specimens with diameter of 3.871 mm and height of 8.443 mm to study progressive failure characteristics. Through 2D vertical slices and reconstructed 3D stereograms, the microstructure and pore morphology of the samples were extracted and quantitatively characterized corresponding to each loading stage. These data show that biological components, coral gravel, and algae bonding surface are weak parts in the reef limestone, which reduces its tensile strength and enhances the heterogeneity of the internal structure. In addition, the relationship between the void volume, solid volume, and total volume of reef limestone CT images with the axial stress-strain curve was discussed.
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We thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive suggestions and comments.
Funding
The work was supported by the project (Grant nos. BJH16J030, BJH16J032), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 42090023, 42077440), the Key Develo** Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant nos. ZDRW-ZS-2021-3-1, ZDBS-LY-DQC003), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no. XDA14040401), Scientific Instrument Develo** Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no.YJKYYQ20190043) and Cas Key Technology Talent Program.
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Zhou, Z., Li, S., Li, X. et al. Investigating progressive failure characteristics of reef limestone based on X-ray micro-CT: take S Reef as an example. Arab J Geosci 15, 1379 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-10628-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-10628-y