Experimental Study of Compressive Mechanical Behavior of Red Sandstone after Heating-Cooling Treatment

Abstract

Investigation of compressive mechanical property of rock materials after heating-cooling treatment is of great significance for deep geothermal energy exploitation. This study conducted a series of uniaxial compressive experiments on red sandstone subjected to different heating-cooling treatments, i.e., heating temperature 25, 200, 400, 600, 800, and 1000°C and cooling temperature of 10°C. The experimental results showed that with an increase in the heating temperature, the peak strength of red sandstone after heating-cooling treatments attained a maximum value under the heating temperature of 400°C. Furthermore, the variations of instantaneous elastic modulus of treated samples are the same as that of primary wave velocity. To futher reveal the failure characteristics of heating-cooling treated red sandstone, related scanning electron microscopy tests were also carried out to analyze the microstructure of red sandstone samples after various heating-cooling treatments, to provide a valuable reference for studying the mechanical properties of rock materials after heating-cooling treatments.