Annotated Tables of Strength and Elastic Properties of Rocks

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Testing for strength and elastic properties of rocks has made rapid progress since the end of World War II. The perfection of standard methods and the awakening interest of all branches of the mineral industry resulted in the collection of a great amount of new physical data on the most common rocks. Interpretation and correlation with technological properties, such as grindability, drillability, and blastability, however, have not kept pace. One of the reasons for this may be the fact that test results on strength and elastic properties are widely scattered in the technical literature. It is the purpose of this paper to tabulate the results from such standardized tests and to discuss the importance of each property and its usefulness to the mineral engineer as reflected in the existing literature. Twenty-one properties are listed in the following tables, which have been determined from rocks commonly encountered in mining, milling, and petroleum exploration (well drilling and rupture of rock formation as related to completing and stimulating production of wells). However, although not all 21 properties have been measured as yet from any one rock, an attempt is made in the tables to make the various results match as well as possible. Probably all properties have been determined for concrete, another brittle but man-made material. They are listed, as available from various sources, for comparison's sake, at the end of Table 5. Other data has been filled in by the author as it was deemed necessary for the discussion. Of course, there are many blanks left, too, but the tables are to be considered as only a first attempt to organize and evaluate the great amount of data that has recently become available. It is hoped that they will stimulate correlation testing and guide individual research to fill in the many existing gaps.