Dynamic Tensile Response of a Microwave Damaged Granitic Rock

Background

Understanding the dynamic tensile response of microwave damaged rock is of great significance to promote the development of microwave-assisted hard rock breakage technology. However, most of the current research on this issue is limited to static loading conditions, which is inconsistent with the dynamic stress circumstances encountered in real rock-breaking operations.

Objective

The objective of this work is to investigate the effects of microwave irradiation on the dynamic tensile strength, full-field displacement distribution and average fracture energy of a granitic rock.

Methods

The split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) system combined with digital image correlation (DIC) technique is adopted to conduct the experiments. The overload phenomenon, which refers to the strength over-estimation phenomenon in the Brazilian test, is validated using the conventional strain gauge method. Based on the DIC analysis, a new approach for calculating the average fracture energy is proposed.

Results

Experimental results show that both the apparent and true tensile strengths increase with the loading rate while decreasing with the increase of the irradiation duration; and the true tensile strength after overload correction is lower than the apparent strength. Besides, the overload ratio and fracture energy also show the loading rate and irradiation duration dependency.

Conclusions

Our findings prove clearly that microwave irradiation significantly weakens the dynamic tensile properties of granitic rock.