Effect of Freezing-Thawing Cycles on the Elastic Waves’ Properties of Rocks

Freezing thawing cycles are known to play an important role in fracture propagation on rock mass and thus in rock slope instabilities. In laboratories, this phenomenon can be studied through the measurement of the velocities of elastic waves. Seven types of rocks differing by their mineralogy and texture were tested (gneiss, basalt, amphibolite, dolomite, sandstone, marble limestone and calcite). Five samples of each rock were tested. All samples were submitted to freezing/thawing cycles following the European Standard describing the tests to determine the frost resistance of natural stone. Elastic waves were recorded on the samples every 14 cycles. The experimentation continued until the rock was macrofissurated. The evolution of the weight of the samples, the velocities of elastic waves, the evolution of the shapes of the waves were recorded to characterize changes over freeze-thaw cycles. In addition, signal processing on the waves allows to compute energy variations as well as the evolution of natural frequencies of the samples.

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