Experimental Study on

Damage Properties of
Rocks Under Dynamic Loading
GAO Wen-xue Liu Yun-tong
(Beijing University of Technology Beijing 100022 China)

Abstract
The damage properties of two types of rocks under dynamic loading are studied. The shock-induced experiments are
done using planar impact technique on the one-stage light gas gun, and the ultrasonic tests on the damaged rocks
have been made by use of the ultrasonic pulse-transmission method. The shock-induced damage of rock is related to
the shock speed and the attenuation coefficient of sonic wave, and the latter reflects the damage degree in rock fairly
well. The attenuation coefficient a can be used as main damage parameter for constructing dam-age model of rock
under dynamic loading.
The experimental research on rock damage and its evolution under dynamic loading is a most attractive problem in
the field of explosive mechanics, rock mechanics and material science and etc. Up to now this research can be
divided into two parts. One is microscopic observation of the samples damaged by dynamic loading, microscopic
analysis of the construction change in material to understand the material break process[1]. The other uses ultrasonic
methods to test the changes in damage rock during shocking, and then defines the damage parameters with
ultrasonic characteristics[2-4]. Because the attenuation takes place when stress wave spreads in damaged rock, with
ultrasonic method we can set up the relationship between the attenuation coefficient and damage parameters. In this
paper, the shock-induced experiments for two kinds of rocks are done using planar impact technique on the one-stage
light gas gun, and the ultrasonic signals in the damaged rocks are measured. Based on this, fitting the relationship
formula of attenuation coefficient of sonic wave, damaged variables and shock-induced damage dissipated energy, it
provides experiment data for constructing rock damage model

1. ROCK DAMAGE EXPERIMENTS
UNDER DYNAMIC LOADING
The experiments are carried out with the one-stage light
gas gun of 37 mm in diameter. The gun is 4.2 m long and
the moving velocity of pills is 50~1000 m/s.
Sticking the flying piece on the pill the high-pressure gas
released drives the pill moving along the vacuum gun tube.
When the moving pill impacts the target board at high
speed the higher-pressure impulse was produced and
recorded that is useful for analyzing dynamic response
characteristic and damage mechanism.
In order to obtain symmetrical. plane shock wave the
sample must be designed with the ratio of thickness to
diameter to eliminate the effect of side sparseness and
chase waves The flying piece is made of aluminum (LY12).
The target board is composed of the cover board,
aluminum ring transducer rock sample and probe The
cover board is 1.5 mm thick and 47.0 mm in diameter. The
sample is designed as roundness 30.0 mm in diameter and
with different thicknesses. Two-spire managing transducer
is embedded in the rock sample. The aluminum ring is
placed around the sample to prevent radial cracking. In
order to realize reclaim softly the special reclaiming
canister installation is used filled up with cushion material to
freeze up the break in the sample effectively.
Where Cpo and CP are respectively the velocities of
elastic longitudinal waves before and after damaging.
Although the target board is complete after dynamic
loading, it is seriously damaged so that echo test signal is
quite week and disturbing signal is very strong. Satisfactory
signals are incepted with transmission method under
middle frequency 50 kHz Because the damage in
aluminum loop is quite trifling, the ultrasonic test can be
done for the whole target board reclaimed. That is firstly to
measure the sound transmit time through the whole target
and then measure the time for aluminum loop the thickness
of the rock sample divided by the time difference is the
velocity of rock sample. If the ultrasonic velocity of the
sample before damage was measured under the same
condition we can obtain the damage parameter in the rock
by Eq.(1).
2.1 The Results of Ultrasonic Velocity
The results of ultrasonic velocities in two kinds of rocks
are shown in Tab.1 and Tab.2. From Tab.1 and Tab.2. it is
shown that the wave velocities of two typical samples are
low and damage is obvious. Impact-induced damaged
area in marble is wider than that in sandstone, which bears
on impacting speed.
If amplitude spectrum has multiple main frequencies, fo
is the maximum one.

2. THE ULTRASONIC TESTS ON DAMAGED ROCK
Through ultrasonic measurement of the velocities of
elastic longitudinal waves before and after damaging, we
can evaluate quantitatively the damage parameter in the
rock The damage can be calculated as follows
2
D = 1 (C p C p 0 )
2.2 The Attenuation and Frequency
Spectrum Analysis of Ultrasonic
2.2.1 The attenuation coefficient
Ultrasonic attenuation reflects the characteristic of stress
wave traveling in the impact-induced damaged rock[5]. When
ultrasonic is traveling in the rock, its energy gradually decreases
with the distance increasing. It is written as
(1) E (x) = E0 e x (2)

94 Santiago Chile, May 2006 Fragblast-8

 Table 1: The results of wave velocity in marble

experiment impact pressure wave Damage attenuation Spectrum Main

speed/ peak value/ velocity/ D coefficient/ area frequency
(ms-1) GPa (ms-1) (dBs-1) f0/kHz

original rock - - 2667 - - 14640 40.00

981013 124.6 1.57 1563 0.657 4.5 8654 40.00
981012B 129.8 1.72 1429 0.713 6.0 7084 43.00
981014A 1730 1.86 1325 0.753 7.8 6143 40.00
981014C 190.4 2.04 1212 0.793 11.5 4031 40.31
981014B 204.0 2.61 1026 0.852 13.5 3089 40.00

Table 2: The results of wave velocity in sandstone

Experiment impact pressure wave Damage attenuation Spectrum Main

No. speed/ peak value/ velocity/ D coefficient/ area frequency
(ms-1) GPa (ms-1) (dBs-1) f0/kHz

original rock - - 3570 - - 13125 37.00

98924A 137 0.36 - - 7.0 8017 41.00
98924E 204 0.51 - - 8.0 6129 42.00
981008 139 0.80 1120 0.900 9.5 6074 59.00
98109A 213 1.25 1026 0.917 12.0 3548 39.00
98109C 230 1.37 95 0.922 16.0 2491 41.00
98109B 272 1.60 816 0.948 22.0 1404 47.00
981012 291 1.73 758 0.955 26.0 - -

Where is the attenuation coefficient of material.
In experiments, the ultrasonic attenuation for original
sample and for damaged sample under impacting at
different speeds are measured separately in full signal; and
the difference among them is the attenuation coefficient, in
terms of dB/ cm Strictly speaking from physical meaning,
the attenuation coefficient should be an even attenuation,
or a comparative measure. It is different from that one
defined in Ref. [2]. Experiment results are shown in Tab.1
and Tab.2. Fig.1 gives the relationship between damage
parameter D and attenuation coefficient. The relationship
with linear fitting is expressed as:
= A + BD (3)
where A and B are regress parameters; A -28.60 B 49.45
for marble, and A -157.70 B 194.66 for sandstone. All the
correlation coefficients exceed 98%. It can be made out
from Fig.1 that there is linear correlation between damage
and attenuation coefficient, which reflects the damage
degree in the rock.
(a) marble (b) sandstone
Figure 2: The relationship of damage parameter and
attenuation coefficient.
2.2.2 Frequency spectrum analysis
During the whole process of rock break, including
fracture producing, enlarging and cracking, the
characteristic change of wave frequency spectrum is
more sensitive than that of wave velocity change [6].
Frequency spectrum analysis is to disperse the wave
signal received, and to calculate the valid wave parts
reflecting rock characteristic with fast Fourier transform
(FFT) to obtain the spectrum, so as to analyze deeply
the damage characteristic in the rock. The spectrum
area reflects the quantity of ultrasonic energy, which
shows the dissipation of the stress wave. The
relationship between spectrum area and attenuation
coefficient is shown in Fig.3 and the relationship
between spectrum area and damage is in Fig.4, from
which you will find that both attenuation coefficient and
damage are inversely proportional to the spectrum
area. It is evident that the spectrum area in marble is
greater than that in sandstone, which explains why the
damage degree in marble is less, and the integrality is
better than sandstone, Because spectrum area reflects
the magnitude. of ultrasonic energy, it indirectly reflects
the energy dissipation of stress wave in the damaged
rock. Thus the spectrum area is regarded as the
characteristic parameter of the stress wave traveling in
the damaged rock;
The ultrasonic test and frequency spectrum analysis in
two kinds of rocks indicate:
1. There is correlation between ultrasonic attenuation
coefficient and damage in the rock?which is
quantitatively propitious to the measurement of the
damage in the rock;
2. Attenuation coefficient and damage are all
inversely proportional to the spectrum area (area
of wave). The spectrum area practically reflects the
transfer and dissipation of energy in the damaged
rock;
3. The higher the speed of impacting, the more serious the
damage degree in the rock;
4. It is important for the original damage to affect the
damage evolution.

Fragblast-8 Santiago Chile, May 2006 95

 Further Hugoniot parameter calculation and SEM
observation research on sample prove above conclusions.
The research on the dynamic damage model for the rock
needs to be done further

REFERENCES

[1] Seamen L, Curran D R, Shockey D A. Computational

models for ductile and brittle fracture [J]. J Appl Phys,
1976 47 (11) 4814~4826.
(a) marble (b) sandstone
[2] Liu Changli, Ahrens T J. Stress wave attenuation in
shock-damaged rock [J]. J Geophys Res, 1997 102
Figure 3: Relations between attenuation coefficient and
(B3): 5243~5250
spectrum area.
[3] Ahrens T J Rubin A M. Impact-induced tensional failure
in rock [J]. J G R, 1993, 98 (E1): 1185~1206.
[4] He Hongliang; Ahrens T J. Mechanical properties of
shock-damaged rocks [J]. Int J Rock Mech Min Sci
&Geomech Abstr, 1994, 31 (5): 525~533
[5] He Hongliang. Damage properties of rocks under
impact-induced [J]. Explosive and Shock (in
Chinese), 1999, 15 (3): 241~245.
[6] Wang Rangjia. Study on classification and dynamic
elastic parameters in rock by sonic wave (in Chinese)
[M]. Beijing: Geological Publishing House, 1997.
(a) marble (b) sandstone

Figure 4: Relations between damage and spectrum area.

3. CONCLUSIONS

Impact-induced damage in the rock is correlated to the

ultrasonic attenuation coefficient, which is an effective
acoustics index for measuring and evaluating the damage
in the rock. The linear correlation between the spectrum
area and the attenuation coefficient or damage reflects the
relation between damage evolution and, energy
dissipation. Thus it proves the theoretical meaning of
constructing dynamic damage model for the rock with
ultrasonic attenuation coefficient.

96 Santiago Chile, May 2006 Fragblast-8