Physical and mechanical characteristics of saturated tuff under the freeze–thaw cycle

Abstract

The freeze–thaw cycle of rocks is a research hotspot in the field of geotechnical engineering, and it significantly affects the eastern part of the Zhejiang Province in China. In this study, we test 40 occurrences of freeze–thaw cycles on tuff from the Ningbo area and investigate the variation of the physical and mechanical properties. The results show that only a small amount of debris falls off the saturated tuff samples during the freeze–thaw cycle. The overall quality of the rock sample gradually decreases with the increase in the number of freeze–thaw cycles. However, the average loss rate of the quality is extremely low, accounting for only 0.07% of the rock sample quality. The wave velocity of the rock sample gradually decreases, and the extent of reduction decreases when the number of cycles increases. In the uniaxial compression test, a failure surface appears for the rock samples with low freeze-thaw cycles. The complete failure surface of the samples gradually disappears. Moreover, the compressive strength of the samples progressively decreases with the increase of the number of freeze–thaw cycles.