For a proper analysis of cortical bone behaviour, it is essential to take into account both the elastic stiffness and the failure criteria. While ultrasound methods allow complete identification of the elastic orthotropic coefficients, tests used to characterise the various failure mechanisms and to identify the brittle tensile strength in all directions are currently inadequate. In the present...

Temperature has a significant role in many actions performed on rocks. An example would be the effect of temperature on rocks in the burial of nuclear waste, geothermal energy extraction, deep oil well drilling, and fires in tunnels. In addition, due to diurnal/nocturnal as well as seasonal temperature variations, rocks undergo a process of heating and cooling. In the present work, the effect o...

Introduction: Understanding the impact process of ice-silicate mixtures is of importance, because water ices exist mostly in a variety of forms of mixtures with silicate or some other components (e.g. ammonia) in the solar system. Decrease of crater volume with increasing silicate content was observed in our previous impact cratering experiments of ice-silicate mixture targets performed using a...

Uniaxial compressive and Brazilian tensile strengths (UCS and BTS) of rocks are considered important properties in the design of most the geotechnical projects that interact with rock such as slope stability and underground excavation. Measuring UCS and BTS using standard laboratory tests are time consuming, tedious and expensive. Moreover, it requires a large number of well-prepared rock cores...

salt crystallization is one of the most important weathering agents and may limit the durability of building stones. salt crystallization induces stresses inside the pores of stones. consequently, stone durability is closely related to its physical properties and strength. the purpose of this study was to propose a statistical model for estimating stone durability against salt crystallization c...

Salt crystallization is one of the most important weathering agents and may limit the durability of building stones. Salt crystallization induces stresses inside the pores of stones. Consequently, stone durability is closely related to its physical properties and strength. The purpose of this study was to propose a statistical model for estimating stone durability against salt crystallization c...

Small samples of rock, like those used in laboratory collision experiments, are known to be much stronger than bodies that are meters to hundreds of meters in size [1]. Specifically, the impactor energy per unit target mass needed to shatter the target decreases dramatically with increasing target size. This occurs because the strength of rock, like many other geological materials, depends stro...