Subcritical crack growth in rocks in an aqueous environment

Abstract

Subcritical crack growth is one of the main causes of time-dependent fracturing in rock. In the present study, we investigated subcritical crack growth in rock in distilled water (pH = 5–7) and in an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOHaq, pH = 12), comparing the results to those in air. We also investigated the effect of the pH in an aqueous environment. We used andesite and granite for all our tests. We determined the relationship between the crack velocity and the stress intensity factor using the double-torsion test under conditions of controlled temperature. We showed that crack velocities in water were higher than those in air, in agreement with other research results indicating that crack velocity increases in water. When we compared our results for NaOHaq with those for water, however, we found that the crack velocity at the same stress intensity factor did not change even though the pH of the surrounding environment was different. This result does not agree with the accepted understanding that hydroxide ions accelerate subcritical crack growth in rocks. We concluded that the pH at the crack tip influences subcritical crack growth, and not the bulk pH, which has little effect.