Abstract
The deterioration of rockfill materials caused by different factors harms the safety and workability of rockfill dams. This has been confirmed by the increase in dam deformation resulting from initial impoundment and water level fluctuation during operation. However, the deterioration process and mechanism for rockfill materials subjected to different weathering conditions lack systematic comparison. In this study, we conduct a series of oedometer tests on rockfill materials that have undergone different wetting–drying cycles and wetting duration. The deterioration in mechanical properties as manifested by the decrease of yield stress and increase of compressibility varies nonlinearly with wetting–drying cycles and wetting duration. The degree of deterioration for rockfill samples subjected to cyclic wetting–dying is more significant than exposed to wetting alone. The relative breakage index and fractal dimension of rockfill samples subjected to cyclic wetting–drying are larger than that exposed to wetting alone, indicating more particle breakage occurred in former conditions. In addition, the scanning electron microscopy analysis and mineral composition content test are performed to investigate the deterioration mechanism of rockfill grains induced by two weathering conditions. The chemical reactions in the wetting process and the crystallization-induced stress in subsequent drying process cause the expansion of micro-cracks and the microstructural changes.
Highlights
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Extensive laboratory tests are carried out to compare the deterioration of rockfill materials subjected to cyclic wetting–drying and continuous wetting.
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Deterioration of rockfill materials exposed to cyclic wetting–drying is much more evident than subjected to the same duration of continuous wetting.
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The soluble minerals and crystallization-induced stress in subsequent dying cause the expansion of flaws and micro-cracks.
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Data Availability
Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.
Abbreviations
- \(e\) :
-
The void ratio
- \(C_{{\text{v}}}\) :
-
The compressibility index
- \(\sigma_{{\text{v}}}\) :
-
The vertical stress (Mpa)
- \(d\) :
-
The grain size (mm)
- \(N\) :
-
The number of wetting–drying cycles
- \(\delta_{{\text{f}}}\) :
-
The size change along the particle size direction (mm)
- \(D\) :
-
The fractal dimension of particle size distribution
- \(M\left( d \right)\) :
-
The cumulative mass of the fragments with size larger than d
- \(N\left( d \right)\) :
-
The number of fragments with size larger than d
- \(B_{{\text{p}}}\) :
-
The breakage potential
- \(B_{{\text{t}}}\) :
-
The total breakage
- \(B_{{\text{r}}}\) :
-
The relative breakage index
- \(S\) :
-
The shape factor of a grain
- \(\rho\) :
-
The unit mass
- \(M\) :
-
The mass of a grain (g)
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFC3005503), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51825905, U1865204) and YaLong River Hydropower Development Company, Ltd (Grant No. 0023-20XJ0011). The Scanning electron microscope (SEM(Zeiss SIGMA)) in this paper has been done in the Testing Center of Wuhan University.
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Cheng, J., Ma, G., Zhang, G. et al. Deterioration of Mechanical Properties of Rockfill Materials Subjected to Cyclic Wetting–Drying and Wetting. Rock Mech Rock Eng 56, 2633–2647 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-022-03209-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-022-03209-8