New Generation of Hoek Cells

Abstract

A new generation of Hoek cells was designed and built to conduct triaxial testing on rock-like materials. The new design has the advantages of both conventional Hoek cells (e.g., minimal preparation and setup time) and conventional triaxial systems (e.g., on specimen radial deformation measurement), and it is capable of measuring the permeability at a controlled temperature. This quick release triaxial cell is robust, fast, and cost efficient and can be used for high pressure–high temperature experiments. In order to assess the robustness of the designed cell, a number of triaxial tests were carried out on different rock specimens (sandstone and marble) at different confining pressures (10, 30, and 50 MPa) and controlled temperatures (30°C and 60°C). In addition, the permeability measurement was conducted on the sandstone specimen under triaxial loading having 10 MPa confining pressure and 30°C temperature.