In Situ Stress Measurement using Acoustic Emission from Cored Rock

E. Villaescusa1, M.Seto2, G. Baird1

1Western Australian School of Mines, Kalgoorlie, Australia
2National Institute for Resources and Environment, Tsukuba, Japan
Abstract
Reliable evaluation of in situ stress is an important phase in the analysis and design of underground excavations, particularly for
evaluating the stability of underground structures to prevent failure or collapse. A technique for the estimation of the full stress
tensor based on acoustic emission (the Kaiser effect) is being developed and trialed at the WA School of Mines. The result
obtained compare well with the standard over-coring method. The advantages of the technique are that it is relatively cheap,
non-time consuming and is applicable to in situ stress measurements at depth in remote regions.

Reliable evaluation of in situ stress is an important phase in

the analysis and design of underground excavations,
particularly for evaluating the stability of underground
structures to prevent failure or collapse. Methods such as
over-coring and hydraulic fracturing are usually expensive
and time consuming; moreover, the are not suited to stress
measurements at depth in remote regions. A stress
measurement technique based on acoustic emission (the
Kaiser effect) has been studied at the National Institute for
Resources and Environment (NIRE, Japan) and the WA
School of Mines (WASM) in recent years. The
measurement technique allows the estimation of stresses
using oriented core that can be drilled from remote and
undeveloped areas of a mine.
The increasing depth and the resulting high stress of a
number of mines in Western Australia has stimulated this
research. Furthermore, several mines are experiencing
relatively high horizontal in-situ stress fields at relatively
shallow depths. It is thus becoming increasingly important
for both design and safety reasons to have a reliable low
cost technique for in situ stress estimation. This paper
reports on the acoustic emission (AE) method being
developed for the measurement of in situ stresses at the
WA School of Mines.

Acoustic Emission & Kaiser Effect

Acoustic emissions (AE) are bursts of high frequency
elastic waves caused by localised failure of a material when
it is placed under load. When a rock sample is loaded
uniaxially and the acoustic emission monitored it is
observed that at a certain stress level the amount of acoustic
emission increases markedly, see Fig.1.
The arrow in Fig. 1 indicates the stress at which the
acoustic emission increases markedly. The basis of the
proposed AE stress measuring technique is the
identification of the stress at which the AE increases
markedly with the maximum previous stress along the
loading axis to which the core had been subject by its in
situ environment.

The phenomenon just described is called the Kaiser effect

(Kaiser, 1953, Kurita & Fujii, 1979, Seto et al., 1999). The
stress at which the acoustic emission increases markedly is
referred to as the take off point.
C um m ulative AE counts

Introduction

800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0

43 M Pa

20

40

60

80

Stress ( M Pa)

Fig.1. Typical AE cumulative count of core sample

versus stress.
It is often said colloquially that the rock remembers the
stress level previously applied to it and that the
remembered stress level can be recovered by the Kaiser
effect.
The stress tensor is six a dimensional entity (three normal
stresses and three shear stresses) and so six independent
normal stress measurements therefore suffice to determine
the full stress tensor. The principal stresses can then be
obtained by a standard eigenvalue analysis.
The underlying philosophy of our proposed technique stress
measuring technique is now apparent. Six small cylindrical
samples of rock are under-cored from conventional oriented
drill core recovered from the site for which stress data is
sought. Each sample is instrumented with pair of acoustic
emission (AE) transducers. The samples are then loaded
uniaxially with the AE transducers providing a record of
the number of AE events with increasing load and hence
stress. Finally, the AE information from the six samples is
analysed to give six independent normal stresses from
which the full stress tensors can be obtained.
The signal noise associated with crack closure or
compaction during loading can obscure the Kaiser effect. It
has been observed that this noise is substantially suppressed
when the acoustic emission information is recovered from a

second subsequent loading of the sample (Seto et al., 1999).

Clearly, this is impossible if the first loading takes the
sample to failure. In the present work three unloadingreloading cycles were performed on each under-cored
sample. The AE activity in the second loading cycle was
usually used to determine the in situ stress.
The take off point is sometimes difficult to determine and
we have developed a criterion to pick the take off point.
This work has been reported elsewhere (Villaescusa et al.,
submitted).
The estimation of the stress tensor uses the normal stresses
obtained from the Kaiser effect analysis of six under-cores
and equation (2.14) of Brady and Brown (1999). The
under-cores must have orientations that lead to stable and
indeed non-singular
mathematical analysis. The
orientations of the under-cores used in the present work are:
Under-core sample
1
2
3
4
5
6

Orientation
Bearing/Plunge
000/90
180/00
270/00
270/45
135/00
180/45

These directions are relative to a vertical conventional drill

core. Hence the analysis of the results involves rotating the
direction of the under-cored samples into the true direction
of the conventional drill core. Of course, more than six
under-cored samples can be used and a least squares
analysis used to determine the full stress tenor.

Sample Preparation
Oriented drill cores having a variety of sizes can be used to
obtain the under-cores from which stresses are measured
using the Kaiser effect. Each rock core was under-cored
into several 20mm diameter samples. The sample lengths
were trimmed to about 50 mm and ground at each end.
Parallelism between the top and bottom faces of each
sample, to within 0.02mm, was accomplished in all cases.
Usually, at least three specimens are prepared for each
orientation.

Sample Loading
The under-cored samples were subjected to a three cycle
loading regime. A servo-controlled testing machine was
used to obtain a constant loading (unloading) rate of 7.5
MPa/min (3.5 MPa/min). The maximum stress level of the
cyclic regime was determined taking into account the depth
of the core, the uniaxial compressive strength of the rock
and orientation of under-cored sample.
During the cyclic loading, the acoustic emissions were
measured by two AE sensors attached on the sides of the
specimens. The AE sensors used in this study were of the
differential (5mm-diameter NF-AE-904DM) type with a
resonance frequency of 500kHz. They had high gains

between 200 and 550 kHz. The response frequency band of

this system was between 50 kHz and 1 MHz.
The signals from the AE sensors were amplified 40 dB by
the pre-amplifiers, then sent to the AE monitoring system
and were amplified further by 40dB. The threshold level
for AE counting was in the range of 150 to 200 mV, which
was slightly higher than the environmental noise. After the
AE testing of each under-cored samples, the take off
point and corresponding normal stress were obtained from
a careful analysis of the recorded AE event data. Finally,
the full stress tensor was computed.

Typical Results
The project to date has undertaken stress measurements
from single oriented cores at depth and from places near
excavations where conventional HI cell measurement have
been undertaken. Fig. 2 shows results from three oriented
cores undertaken at the Auriongolds Kundana Mine in
Western Australia. The crosses in the figure indicate the
average orientation for each component of the principal
stress.

1 345/04

2 075/02

3 171/81

AE method WASM
Magnitude
Bearing/plunge
Depth = 341m
1 = 31 Mpa
001/01
2 = 24 Mpa
271/02
3 = 18 Mpa
130/88
Depth = 347m
1 = 32 Mpa
001/04
2 = 22 Mpa
270/15
3 = 18 Mpa
107/75
Depth = 592m
1 = 54 Mpa
311/05
2 = 40 Mpa
043/23
3 = 23 Mpa
209/66

Fig.2. Stress measurements from a single oriented core at

Auriongolds Kundana Mine, WA.
At this mine, the principal stress orientations were
estimated by an external consultant using the HI cell. The
estimated orientations between 200 and 600m depths were
(stress component: bearing/plunge) 1: 355/10, 2:260/20,
3:115/70. These estimates are in excellent agreement with
the estimated values determined using the AE method. Fig.
3 shows the results from the Mount Marion Mine in
Western Australia.

Depth = 363m HI
Magnitude
Bearing/plunge
1 = 43 MPa
074/04
2 = 33 MPa
164/01

2 003/03

3 270/81

1 095/04

3 = 16 MPa
266/86
Depth = 363m AE
1 = 45 MPa
123/08
2 = 22 MPa
029/28
3 = 8 Mpa
229/61
Depth = 493m AE
1 = 51 MPa
271/00
2 = 44 MPa
181/19
3 = 19 MPa
002/71

Fig. 3. Stress measurements adjacent to an HI cell site at

South Kal Mines Mount Marion Gold Mine, WA.
The crosses in the figure indicate the average orientation
for each component of the principal stress. In this mine, a
number of stress measurements have been carried out over
the last three years including a full stress tensor comparison
between the conventional HI cell and the AE method. The
figure also shows a recent result using AE method at depth.
The results from both methods correlate very well.

Conclusions
A new methodology to undertake stress measurements
using Acoustic Emission (AE) techniques has been
developed and implemented on a number of geotechnical
environments in Australia. The stress is determined using
oriented core and the results are similar to those established
by conventional over-coring techniques. The advantage of
the new methodology is that the stress is obtained at very
low cost and underground access is not required.

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the management of Auriongolds
Kundana Mine and South Kal Mines Mount Marion Mine,
for their permission to publish the results shown on this
paper.

References
Brady, BHG; Brown, ET (1999) Rock Mechanics for
Underground Mining. Allen & Unwin, London
Kaiser, J (1953) Erkenntnisse und Folgerungen aus der
Messung von Gerauschen bei Zungbeanspruchung
von metallischen Werkstoffen. Archiv. Fur das
Eisenhuttenwasen:43-45
Kurita, K; Fujii N (1979) Stress memory of crystalline
rocks in acoustic emission. Geophys. Res. Lett. 6:
No.1, 9-12
Seto, M; Nag, DK; Vutukuri VS (1999) In-situ rock stress
measurement from rock cores using the acoustic
emission and deformation rate analysis.
Geotechnical & Geological Engineering 17: No.34, 1-26

Villaescusa, E; Seto, M; Baird, G (submitted) Stress

measurements from oriented core. International
Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences