Static and dynamic Young’s moduli of chalk from the North Sea

Abstract

We present results from a study of dynamic and static Young’s moduli of North Sea chalk based on laboratory tests on both dry and water-saturated chalk. We obtained static moduli by using both strain gauge and linear voltage displacement transducer (LVDT) measurements. We investigated the influence of pore fluid on static and dynamic Young’s moduli and evaluated the two methods for obtaining static Young’s modulus. We obtained good agreement between dynamic and static Young’s moduli from strain gauge measurements on dry chalk, but for water-saturated chalk the dynamic Young’s modulus was larger than the measured static Young’s modulus. This difference may be caused in part by the influence of the difference in frequencies of static and dynamic measurements. Another reason for the observed difference may be a practical experimental problem that causes the measured static Young’s modulus for water-saturated chalk to be lower than the true modulus. When we compared dynamic Young’s modulus for dry chalk with that for water-saturated chalk, the dry modulus was larger than the water-saturated modulus, probably owing to shear weakening of the chalk. Young’s modulus from LVDT measurements does not relate to dynamic Young’s modulus for dry or water-saturated rock because the LVDT is not able to accurately measure the small deformations of the samples during loading at relatively low stresses.