Estimation of Rock In-Situ Stress by Acoustic and Electromagnetic Emission

Abstract

The Kaiser Effect in acoustic emission is often used for an estimation of the stress to which rocks have been subjected. However, there are cases in which the Kaiser Effect is not clear, since the noises due to the contact and/or the stick slip between the pre-induced fracture surfaces are measured during the reloading process. In such cases, estimation of previous stress is difficult by the conventional method which is based on the acoustic emission activity observed under reloading process. In the tests for the Kaiser Effect on rocks, therefore, the noises must be eliminated from the acoustic emission generated from newly created cracks during the second loading process. Such techniques as analysis of the difference between the acoustic emission activity observed in the first and second reloading and the analysis of the change in the slope of the acoustic emission amplitude distribution have been proposed. In this paper we present a new method by which the maximum previous stress in rocks can be directly estimated without any post signal analysis. In the new method, simultaneous measurement of acoustic and electromagnetic emission during loading test of rock sample is employed. The electromagnetic emission in the deformation of rock sample generates only when the fresh surfaces due to cracking are created in the material, and the source of electromagnetic emission is the electrification between the fresh crack surfaces. This paper describes the simultaneous measurement of acoustic and electromagnetic emission useful for estimating the rock in-situ stress.