Investigating the Mechanical Properties and Drill-ability of Rocks

Abstract

Drilling is the primitive and common operation in rock excavation industry, starting from exploration to exploitation. Effect of mechanical properties of the formation on drilling operation is a big challenge to mining engineers. The primarily problem is rock drill-ability. The objective of this paper is to correlate the drill-ability of certain rocks with their mechanical properties including Compressive strength, Tensile strength, Schmidt hammer rebound number and Shore Hardness number, in order to establish rate of penetration. This paper contains investigation of both laboratory experiments and Field examination of drilling equipment. Laboratory work includes the determination of various mechanical properties of rock specimen, determined according to ASTM procedure using Universal Testing Machine. Schmidt hammer test conductedon the rock specimen by clamping into the UTM loading platens. Shore hardness test performed on disc specimen carefully prepared for the purpose. The test was conducted as per standard procedure.