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A lab-testing based geomechanical characterization of metamorphic rocks

focusing on post-failure behavior

Conference Paper · May 2014

DOI: 10.1201/b16955-15

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 Rock Engineering and Rock Mechanics: Structures in and on
Rock Masses – Alejano, Perucho, Olalla & Jiménez (Eds)
© 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, London, 978-1-138-00149-7

A lab-testing based geomechanical characterization of metamorphic

rocks focusing on post-failure behavior

I. Pérez-Rey, J. Arzúa, J. Barbiero & L.R. Alejano

Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Engineering, University of Vigo, Spain

G. Walton
Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

ABSTRACT: The stress-strain response of some intact metamorphic rocks (amphibolite, gneiss and marble)
has been studied based on around 60 compressive uniaxial and triaxial strength tests. The results have been
interpreted to obtain peak and residual strength, and post-peak parameters. Particular attention has been given
to the study of dilation. The dilation angle of these intact rocks has been fitted to recently developed models for
plastic shear strain and confinement-stress-dependent dilation. Even if the dilative response of these rocks has
shown to follow similar trends to those observed in other hard rocks, in the case of foliated ones the peak dilation
angle attain is not as high as that of more homogeneous (granite, marble). This is attributed to the fact that the
final fracturing of the samples partially follows already existing weakness planes, which show less dilation than
newly developed shear bands.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background
The stress–strain behavior of rocks has been
researched extensively with respect to elastic and
peak-strength behavior. Nonetheless, a number of
papers have recently been published focusing on the
post-peak portion of the stress–strain curve. In partic-
ular, these studies have focused on evolving failure
criteria and dilation response of sedimentary rocks
(coal, limestone, sandstone, mudstone, etc . . .) and
igneous rocks (granite).
In order to improve this database and provide
a more complete view of post-failure behavior of
rocks, aseries of uniaxial and triaxial tests of differ- Figure 1. Stress–strain curve with loading–unloading
ent metamorphic rocks have been carried out with cycles for atriaxial test on a Carrara marble specimen.
stress control, volumetric strain measurements and
loading–unloading cycles (Fig. 1). irrecoverable strain suffered by the rock. Alejano and
Alonso (2005) put forward a confinement stress and
plasticity dependent model of dilatancy, based on
1.2 Dilatancy
fitting triaxial test results on samples of sedimen-
Dilatancy is the volumetric expansion of a material, tary rocks by Farmer (1983) and Medhurst & Brown
for instance rock, particularly after failure. Semi- (1998). One of the main advantages of this model is
nal researchers in rock mechanics remarked that this that it only depends on one parameter.
parameter was difficult to calculate, due to the diffi- Later, Zhao and Cai (2010) and Arzúa & Alejano
culties in controlling the stress-strain response after (2013) showed that the above mentioned approach did
peak. In order to understand the dilation pattern of not fit results of tests on igneous rocks. Zhao and Cai
a rock sample, multiple volumetric strain measured (2010) adjusted a model to various dilatancy results
compression tests at various confinement levels are of different rock types which fit quite well, but at the
required; ideally, these tests should include some expense of needing 9 parameters of unclear physical
loading–unloading cycles. significance.
Detournay (1986) was probably the first author Within this framework, the authors have consid-
suggesting that dilation could be dependent on the ered the interest of performing more tests in some

107
metamorphic rocks in order to extend the dilation
database, with the aim of better understand this param-
eter and eventually try to propose simpler and/or more
accurate models to capture dilatant behavior.

2 LABORATORY WORK

2.1 Test set-up

The rock mechanics laboratory at the University of
Vigo uses a servo-controlled press able to carry out
compression tests while maintaining a constant con-
fining stress. By measuring the displaced hydraulic
fluid in the Hoek’s cell required to maintain confining
pressure, the lateral component of volumetric strain
can be determined. Axial strain is measured by LVDTs Figure 2. Rock samples to be tested. First, amphibolite,
second orthogneiss and third, marble.
fixed to the lower platen of the press. With this data of
axial and volumetric strain for every stress level it is
possible to compute radial strain. The complete stress–
strain curves derived,as this one presented in Figure 1,
can then be used to characterize rock behavior.

2.2 Rocks tested

In this study we have tested three metamorphic rocks:a
garnet amphibolite from Touro (La Coruña, Spain), an
orthogneiss from Noia (same province) and Carrara
marble (Italy).
The garnet amphibolite is a compact, brownish to
greenish grey, somewhat banded (Fig. 2 left hand
side), medium size grained (0.1 to 0.2 mm) meta-
morphic rock formed through recrystallization under
conditions of high viscosity and directed pressure. It
is composed mainly of amphibole minerals (actino-
lite) and plagioclase feldspar. It also contains notable
quantities of quartz, garnets and pyroxenes. The meta-
morphism has somewhat flattened and elongated the
mineral grains to produce a banded texture (in-between
schistose and coarse grained, see Figure 3, left hand
side). The material was recovered in an old copper
Touro mine, located some kilometres west of Santiago
de Compostela.
The orthogneiss is a very compact high-grade
regional metamorphic rock, derived from granite and
composed by quartz, feldspar (alkaline and plagio-
clase), mica (mainly biotite) and small quantities of
hornblende. It is medium to coarse-foliated rock (Fig-
ure 2, central sample), characterized by discontinuous,
alternating light and dark layers, the former usually
having a coarsely granular texture (0.3 to 0.5 mm)
while the latter, may be more foliated (Figure 3, right
hand side). The material was recovered in an aggre-
gate quarry, two kilometres south of Noia (La Coruña,
Spain).
The Carrara marble is a metamorphic rock formed
almost entirely by calcite grains. Most grains in the
tested samples studied are closest to approximately
0.1 mm in size. The texture is granoblastic, so it can
be described as formed by equigranular crystals which
adopt a polygonal morphology, typical in the prod-
ucts of thermal metamorphism such as this rock. It
Figure 3. Thin plate sections with crossed polarization
(upper part), and with visible light (lower part) of amphi-
bolite from Touro (left hand side) and orthogneiss from Noia
(right hand side). Remark the foliation in the amphibolite
(amphibole colored crystals) and the gneiss (black Biotite).
therefore shows no banding or any relevant weakness
direction (Fig. 2 right hand side).
2.3 Testing
We have tested between 12 and 20 samples of each
of the above mentioned rocks.All of these tests had
confining pressures in the range of 0 to 12 MPa. Due
to the gneiss is and extremely strong and brittle rock
(UCS > 250 MPa), only 13 tests were performed, with
confinements only between 0 and 6 MPa.
As indicated in section 2.1, the radial strain is cal-
culated using axial and volumetric strain by means of
equation 1.
Typical graphical results for confined strength test-
sare shown in Figure 4. In these graphs it is also
depicted how to obtain the most relevant geotechni-
peak
cal parameters: peak strength (σ1 ), residual strength
res
(σ1 ), elastic Young’s modulus (E), Poisson’s ratio (ν)
and drop modulus (M ).

108

Figure 4. Stress–strain graph for confined compression
tests on metamorphic rock samples, including amphibolite,
orthogneiss and marble. The first curve shows how to obtain
the values of peak and residual strength (σ1
peak
and σ1res ),
elastic Young’s modulus (E), Poisson’s ratio (ν) and drop
modulus (M).
It should be noted that because of the brittleness
of gneiss (and also amphibolite to a lesser extent)
it was difficult to control the failure of the samples
and achieve a stable transition from peak to residual
strength (Fig. 4). This suggests that the rate of strength
loss observed could be a function of the press strain
velocity, and not of the rock itself. Even if the strength
data in this portion of the tests cannot be considered
reliable, however, the axial–radial strain relationships
should still be representative.
2.4 Computing the dilation angle
Dilation angle was determined using the generalized
approach proposed by Vermeer and De Borst (1994):
109
Figure 5. Stress–strain relationships of a compressive test
on a rock sample. In the lower graph, the irrecoverable strain
locus (relating the plastic components of the volumetric and
axial strains) is presented, together with the formulation on
which it is based.
This formulation is valid for the interpretation of
triaxial tests, plane strain conditions and true triaxial
situations. The plastic parameter selected is the plastic
shear strain:
Consequently, to calculate the dilation angle it is
necessary to obtain the incremental plastic strains.This
is achieved by decomposing the total strains into their
elastic and plastic parts:
This is depicted graphically in Fig. 5.For the axial
strain one can plot straight lines —with slopes equal
to the Young’s modulus— from arbitrary stress–axial
strain curve values and then to read the plastic axial
strain in the abscissa axis.
To obtain an accurate value for volumetric strain, the
use of unloading–loading cycles allows the determina-
tion of the irrecoverable volumetric strain locus, which
links the points of minimum strain in every cycle, as
Fig. 5 illustrates. Once this irrecoverable strain locus
is plotted, the technique mimics that of the axial strain:
a straight line is plotted from the total to the irrecov-
erable volumetric strain locus, parallel to the nearest
cycles.The volumetric plastic strain corresponds to the
point on the irrecoverable strain locus, as shown in
Fig. 5.
Repeating this process several times for every test,
p p
it is possible to obtain pairs of values (εv –ε1 ). Then,
using eqs. (1 to 4), a point cloud was obtained for
dilation as a function of γ p .
It should be noted that some authors subtract the
value of γ p associated to crack damage (usually small)
from the obtained values, as the irrecoverable strains
prior to this point are likely related to separate mecha-
nisms. This has not been done here, since the authors
consider the effect relatively negligible.
Table 1. Best fit parameters for peak and residual strength
parameters for the 3 tested rocks according to Hoek–Brown
and Mohr–Coulomb failure criteria.

σc
Rock Strength MPa m s a R2

Hoek–Brown
Amphibolite peak 113.5 13.47 1 0.5 0.639
res 113.5 3.11 0.048 0.6 0.877
Gneiss peak 255.0 29.21 1 0.5 0.765
res 255.0 6.25 0.004 0.68 0.792
Marble peak 94.3 5.5 1 0.5 0.983
res 94.3 4.4 0.004 0.66 0.969

c φ
o
Rock Strength MPa R2

Mohr–Coulomb
Amphibolite peak 17.17 52.6 0.980
res 4.49 41.2 0.983
Gneiss peak 30.92 61.6 0.996
res 1.13 58.1 0.997
Marble peak 25.6 33.2 0.998
res 1.3 46.2 0.998

3 RESULTS

3.1 Strength
To study the strain–softening strength response of the
rock samples, peak and residual Hoek–Brown (H–B)
and Mohr–Coulomb (M–C) failure criteria have been
fitted to the peak and residual strength values derived
from tests.Whereas peak strength was fitted with the
traditional H–B criterion (a = 0.5 and s = 1) typical of
intact rock, the residual one has been fitted to the gen-
eralized H–B criterion, which provided better results.
These fits, together with the original test data, are
shown in Fig. 6.
Triaxial tests were only performed for up to 12 MPa
(only up to 6 MPa with reliable results for gneiss),
so the curvature of the enveloping failure is not well
defined. This is probably why H–B and M–C fit-
ted well with the results. The values of the obtained
strength parameters and the observed regression coef-
ficients are presented in Table 1.
Attention should be paid to how the strength drop
occurs mainly in the cohesive component of all the Figure 6. Peak and residual strength tests results and fits to
rocks tested. For marble, friction strengthening is Hoek–Brown and Mohr–Coulomb failure criteria for the 3
observed, while friction kept almost constant for studied metamorphic rocks.
gneiss. Also note that the amphibolite results are more
scattered showing lower regression coefficients.
For the sake of briefness,estimates of elastic param-
eters (Young’s modulus and Poisson ratio) and drop confinement levels (results from multiple tests are
modulus are not presented in this text. aggregated for each confinement level). Results are
illustrated in Fig. 7, which shows dilation angle depen-
dencies as suggested by Alejano & Alonso (2005). In
3.2 Dilatancy results
particular, the dilation angle is controlled first by con-
By means of the dilatancy computation approach pre- fining pressure (when σ3 grows, ψ diminishes), and
sented in section 2.4, (γp − ψ) points clouds have second, by plastic shear strain (i.e. as γ p increases,
been produced for each type of rock at every available ψ decays).

110
 Table 2. Best fit parameters for dilation angle–plastic
parameter curves for the 3 rocks studied at different
confinements.

σ3
Rock MPa a b c R2

Amphibolite 2 40.00 0.90 0.312 0.273

4 39.59 0.89 0.400 0.716
6 34.00 0.70 0.590 0.189
10 30.00 0.62 1.047 0.453
12 34.42 0.49 0.674 0.351
Gneiss 2 35.00 50.00 0.156 0.507
4 30.19 32.00 0.170 0.330
6 27.64 22.04 0.209 0.719
Marble 0 45.82 8.42 0.011 0.155
1 63.36 2.44 0.715 0.851
2 58.08 4.33 0.838 0.862
4 52.67 3.48 0.651 0.883
6 47.10 4.28 0.885 0.811
8 42.83 5.71 1.151 0.936
10 41.74 4.25 0.663 0.923
12 45.53 3.68 0.926 0.912

confinements, as fitted to eq. (5) with MATLAB. The

Figure 7. Dilation results and Zhao & Cai model fits.
It is worth mentioning that the wide dispersion of
test results is far larger than those observed in gran-
ites (Arzúa & Alejano, 2013) or coal (Medhurst &
Brown, 1998), particularly for the foliated amphibolite
and gneiss samples. This can be attributed to the more
heterogeneous nature of these rocks. Since 3 to 4 tests
were performed for each rock and stress level, even
if there is wide dispersion, we consider the average
values to be reasonably representative.
The obtained results were compared with the model
proposed by Zhao & Cai (2010). This requires lab data
to be fitted to eq. (5) for every confinement stress,
which relates ψ with γ p :
Parameters a, b and c control the shape of the
curve. Although each of them affects the whole curve,
they primarily influencejust one aspect of shape. a
mainly controls the peak dilation, b controls peak dila-
tion location and c controls the decay rate. Table 2
shows the best fit parameters for dilation angle–plastic
parameter curves for the 3 rocks studied at different
fits roughly capture the general trends, but not the fully
range of variability, which is indicated by some low
regression coefficients shown in Table 2. The fitting
of the b parameters is particularly complex, since there
are few data for the lower values of γ p . Fig. 7 illustrates
the fitted points cloud (lines) for each rock and for each
confining pressure.
The amphibolite is strongly foliated,the marble has
a homogeneous grain structure and the gneiss can
be considered intermediate (homogeneous regions of
white minerals with some dark foliated bands). At a
first glimpse, Fig. 7 suggests that marble dilates more
than gneiss and this rock more than amphibolite. How-
ever, decay rates seem higher for marble than for the
other two foliated rocks. This is consistent with the
fabric of these rocks (Fig. 8).
The parameters a, b and c also showed confining
dependence, as depicted in Fig. 9, according to:
where σ3 is expressed in MPa.
The dilation behaviour of a rock is fully charac-
terised by a1 , a2 , a3 , b1 , b2 , b3 , c1 , c2 and c3 (see Table
3). Using these coefficients it is possible to compare
variations in fitted parameters at different confining
pressures. To obtain the fitting of this values starting
from the data in Table 2, some outlier values have been
removed, in particular b and c values for amphibolite.
Only three points were available for gneiss. These fit-
ting problems may be attributed to the scarcity and
variability of data, but also to the fact that Zhao &
Cai (2010) model does not provide a perfect fit to the
dilatant behaviour of these rocks.

111
 4 CONCLUSIONS

The main aim of this study is to contribute to the

Figure 8. Pictures of two failed specimens of every tested
rock (amphibolite, gneiss and marble) and sketch of failure
pattern observed in some specimens of foliated rocks.
database on post-failure stress–strain behavior of
metamorphic foliated and non-foliated rock samples.
Peak and residual strength were estimated for
each test and dilation angle behavior was computed
throughout the deformation process. As previously
observed, this angle was shown to be dependent on
both confining stress and plastic shear strain.
Test results were fitted to a previously proposed
model (Zhao & Cai (2010)) with moderate success.
The average results obtained are similar to those
reported in literature for analogous rocks, since our
dilation angle results were located between those for a
harder rock (quartzite) and a softer rock (coal).
Failure in a foliated rock may follow pre-existing
weakness bands, so dilation does not rise as high as in
more homogeneous grain size rocks (marble). How-
ever, once attained the dilation peak (associated with
the breaking of the asperities of new fractures) the
decay is stronger in marble.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank the Spanish Ministry of Science

and Technology for financial support under Contract
Reference Number BIA2013–44690–P, which funded
developments in this paper. This project was partially
financed by means of ERDF funds of the EU.

REFERENCES
Alejano, L.R. & Alonso, E. 2005. Considerations of the
dilatancy angle in rocks and rock masses. International
Journal of Rock Mechanics & Mining Sciences 42(4):
481–507.
Arzúa, J. & Alejano, L.R. 2013. Dilation in granite dur-
ing servo-controlled triaxial strength tests. International
Journal of Rock Mechanics & Mining Sciences 61:
Figure 9. Graphs of parameters a, b and c against con- 43–56.
fining stress for the tested rocks and fitting of parameters Detournay, E. 1986. Elasto-plastic model of a deep tunnel for
a1 , a2 , a3 , b1 , b2 , b3 , c1 , c2 and c3 . a rock with variable dilatancy. Rock Mechanics & Rock
Engineering 19: 99–108.
Farmer, I.W. 1983. Engineering behavior of rocks. 2nd ed.
Table 3. Plastic shear strain parameters of the Zhao & Cai’s London: Chapman & Hall.
model, for the 3 studied and 3 other rocks. Medhurst T.P. & Brown E.T. 1998. A study of the mechanical
behaviour of coal for pillar design. International Journal
Rock a1 a2 a3 b1 b2 b3 c1 c2 c3 of Rock Mechanics & Mining Sciences & Geomechanic
Abstracts 35(8): 1087–105.
Quartzite 63.1 11.9 2.8 5.83 6.2 6.7 0.14 1.14 1.23 Vermeer, P.A. & De Borst, R. 1984. Non-associated plasticity
Granite 29 28.1 4.7 8.3 17.5 1.5 0.014 0.07 0.71 for soils, concrete and rock. Heron 29(3): 64 pp.
Marble 41.9 28.9 3.45 4.5 3.97 0.06 8e-3 0.5 0.29
Gneiss 24.8 19.3 3.15 11.4 72.3 3.18 0.08 0.05 0.48
Zhao, X. G., & Cai, M. 2010. A mobilized dilation
Amphibolite 22.8 21.9 10.2 1e-4 1.08 15.1 1e-4 0.21 0.53 angle model for rocks. International Journal of Rock
Coal 20.0 35.6 0.89 10.47 26.58 1.31 0.15 17.5 0.82 Mechanics & Mining Sciences 47: 368–384.

The obtained coefficients are within a reasonable

range (Table 3). Using these values, it is possible
to compare variations in fitted parameters at dif-
ferent confining pressures. Some fits associated for
particular tests are also shown in Fig. 7.

112

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