True Triaxial Testing of Anisotropic Solids

Accurate determination of rock mechanical properties (particularly sedimentary shales, mica and schists with foliation and bedding planes) is critical to the safe design and excavation of underground mines and tunnels. Traditional techniques to calculate rock elastic properties often involve testing cylindrical or disc-shaped specimens under uniaxial compression or diametrical loading. But, these stress conditions may not represent the actual stress state under which rock is subjected at depth. A true triaxial testing technique on cubed specimens are, therefore, preferred as it better represents field stress conditions. This paper introduces and verifies a modified step-compression true-triaxial based technique to measure the elastic constants in fibre-reinforced epoxy samples, selected as a low-porosity anisotropic solid. The elastic constants obtained from the proposed method (even under higher stress levels) are found to be in good agreement with results from the benchmark tests with uniaxial compression but in the meanwhile offers other anisotropic parameters, which cannot be obtained from conventional measurements.