Strength Envelopes for Florida Rock and Intermediate Geomaterials
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STRENGTH ENVELOPES FOR FLORIDA ROCK AND INTERMEDIATE GEOMATERIALS By THAI NGUYEN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 Thai Nguyen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge and thank the following important people who have supported me throughout my Ph.D. program. First and foremost, to Dr. Michael McVay, who provided me with great guidance in this research effort. In all of Dr. McVay’s classes, he always packs in a lot of material so that students have to swim fast to avoid losing track. Following him, I packed a lot of material in some of my conference presentations, but I have yet been able to talk fast and keep all the audience awake. Special thanks go to Dr. Scott Wasman, Dr. Xiaoyu Song, and Dr. Timothy Townsend for their guidance and support. I am blessed with the tremendous help from numerous people involved with the research project: David Horhota, Rodrigo Herrera, Juan Castellanos, Larry Jones, Jose Hernando, Dino Jameson, Glenn Johnston, Chen Weng, Beth Machosky, William Greenwood, Dan Pitocchi, Brian Strode, Barbara Beatty, Awilda Merced, Jon Sinnreich, Richard Booze, Wing-Kong Cha, Wei Meng, Zaid Ajlani, Austin Smith, Ashton Huff, Kaiqi Wang, and Kunyu Yang. I am thankful for my friends here in and outside the University of Florida for their encouragement and support. I am deeply grateful for my dad, my in-laws, my brother’s family, and all my extended families for cheering me up from half a world away in my home country – Vietnam. Finally, I wish to thank my wife, my son, and my daughter for their love and supporting me emotionally during my stay at school. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ 3 LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................... 6 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 15 2 FLORIDA SURFACE ROCK GEOLOGY AND GENERAL TERMINOLOGIES ............ 18 2.1 Geology of Florida Surface Rocks .............................................................................. 18 2.2 Example Pictures of Florida Rocks ............................................................................. 22 2.3 General Carbonate-Rock Terminologies..................................................................... 23 3 OVERVIEW OF CONVENTIONAL LABORATORY TESTS FOR CARBONATE- ROCKS .................................................................................................................................. 29 3.1 Porosity and Unit Weight Tests .................................................................................. 29 3.2 Carbonate Content Test ............................................................................................... 33 3.3 Powder X-ray Diffraction (XRD) ............................................................................... 34 3.4 Brazilian Splitting Test ............................................................................................... 35 3.5 Unconfined Compression Test .................................................................................... 37 4 PROPERTIES OF CARBONATE-ROCKS AND IGMS ..................................................... 44 4.1 Florida Data ................................................................................................................. 44 4.2 Florida Carbonate-Rock Porosity and Unit Weight Results ....................................... 44 4.3 Florida Carbonate-Rock Minerals ............................................................................... 46 4.4 Subsurface Spatial Variability..................................................................................... 48 4.5 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 49 5 SPLITTING TENSION AND UNCONFINED COMPRESSION STRENGTHS OF FLORIDA CARBONATE-ROCKS AND IGMS ................................................................. 58 5.1 Necessity for Florida Rock Strength Correlation ........................................................ 58 5.2 Brazilian Splitting Tension Strength Test (BST) ........................................................ 60 5.3 Unconfined Compression Strength qu ......................................................................... 64 5.4 Unconfined Strengths of Marls ................................................................................... 68 5.5 Stress – Strain Behavior .............................................................................................. 69 5.6 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 70 6 STRENGTH ENVELOPES OF FLORIDA CARBONATE-ROCKS AND IGMS ............. 82 4 6.1 Existing Strength Envelopes ....................................................................................... 82 6.2 Triaxial System for Rock Testing ............................................................................... 88 6.3 Triaxial Hoek-cell ....................................................................................................... 89 6.4 Displacement or Strain Measurements........................................................................ 90 6.5 Range of Triaxial Confining Pressures ....................................................................... 91 6.6 Triaxial Stress-Strain and Volumetric Responses of Florida Carbonate-rocks .......... 93 6.7 Extension Test Results ................................................................................................ 96 6.8 Intact-rock Strength Envelope .................................................................................... 98 6.9 Simplified Intact-rock Strength Envelope ................................................................. 102 6.10 Rock Mass Strength Envelope .................................................................................. 106 6.10.1 Weight-adjusted Strength Envelope .............................................................. 107 6.10.2 Recovery-adjusted Strength Envelope ........................................................... 108 6.11 Summary ................................................................................................................... 110 7 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .............................................................. 132 APPENDIX A ROCK CORE DESCRIPTIONS ......................................................................................... 136 B ROCK CORE PICTURES ................................................................................................... 138 C ROCK TRIAXIAL TEST PROCEDURE ........................................................................... 149 C.1 Sigma-1 Features ....................................................................................................... 149 C.2 Sample Preparation ................................................................................................... 150 C.3 Isotropic Loading to 3max ......................................................................................... 151 C.3 Deviatoric (Shear) Loading ....................................................................................... 152 C.4 End Test .................................................................................................................... 152 D PICTURES OF SPECIMENS AFTER TRIAXIAL TESTS ............................................... 153 E REPRESENTATIVE INDIVIDUAL TEST RESULTS ..................................................... 156 F RECOMMENDED PROCEDURE TO ESTABLISH STRENGTH ENVELOPE OF A DESIGN PROJECT ............................................................................................................. 171 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 178 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...................................................................................................... 182 5 LIST OF TABLES Table page 3-1 Mineral specific gravities from literature ......................................................................... 38 3-2 Proposed vug descriptions ................................................................................................ 38 3-3 Proposed porosity descriptions ......................................................................................... 38 3-4 Typical carbonate-rock strengths ...................................................................................... 38 4-1 List of projects in data set #1 ............................................................................................ 50 4-2 List of projects in data set #2 ............................................................................................ 51 4-3 Carbonate content versus XRD interpreted results ........................................................... 52 4-4 Estimated mineral components from carbonate content and specific gravity results ....... 52 5-1 Splitting tension formation factor (Ft) .............................................................................