Very slow creep tests on rock samples

Study on Creep Characteristics of Cemented Waste Rock Backfills

Slip instability and tensor instability are two kinds of failure modes of cemented waste rock backfills. In order to simulate the creep characteristics of cemented waste rock backfills, PFC was carried out. The results show that: rocks inside the models will have displacement under load. The expansion is caused by large lateral displacement of the rocks. A non-stationary creep model of cemented...

Presenting an experimental creep model for rock salt

During the recent decades, the design and construction of underground spaces into rock salt have been particularly regarded for storing petroleum fluids, natural gas, and compressed air energy, and also for disposing nuclear and chemical wastes. The rock salt hosting such spaces will be subjected to various types of monotonic/cyclic, short-term/long-term stresses during the construction and/or ...

Predicting time-to-failure in rock extrapolated from secondary creep

Stress relaxation experiments are reported that culminate in energetic failure in rocks analogous to the loading cycle and subsequent localization or reactivation on brittle faults embedded in an elastic medium. Universally, rapid primary deformation arrests and transitions into a long secondary deformation phase that ultimately accelerates to catastrophic rupture. Primary deformation (u) confo...

Evaluating the Effects of Radio-Frequency Treatment on Rock Samples: Implications for Rock Comminution

Eigentimes and Very Slow Processes

We investigate the importance of the time and length scales at play in our descriptions of Nature. What can we observe at the atomic scale, at the laboratory (human) scale, and at the galactic scale? Which variables make sense? For every scale we wish to understand we need a set of variables which are linked through closed equations, i.e., everything can meaningfully be described in terms of th...