Triaxial compression tests were conducted using the loading system at the Geological Survey of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Ibaraki, Japan (Fig. 2a) (Lei 2006). The loading system was renewed recently, allowing the axial piston to be advanced at a constant stress/strain rate using a servo-controlled system. During the experiments, the confining and pore pressures were controlled individually by syringe pumps. Axial (εa) and radial (εr) strains were measured with six cross-type strain gauges attached directly to the samples (Fig. 2b). Twenty-eight piezoelectric transducers (PZTs) with resonance frequencies of 0.25–2 MHz were mounted on the sample surface for monitoring of AE and measurement of velocity (Table 2). After all of the strain gauges and PZTs had been glued onto the samples, the specimens were jacketed with silicone sealant (about 5 mm in thickness) to prevent interaction with the confining oil. All experiments were performed at a constant displacement rate of 0.01 mm/min (corresponding to a strain rate of ~1.33 × 10−6 s−1) and a constant confining pressure of 24.5 MPa. For wet experiments, distilled water was used as pore fluid and injected into the upstream of the sample at a constant pore pressure of 4 MPa. The downstream of the sample was released to atmospheric pressure.
A total of five samples were tested. In this study, we focused on results for two samples: IGh5 and IGf8. Samples IGh5 and IGf8 were selected to investigate the frequency characteristics of AE signals because a relatively wide range of dominant frequency bands can be measured using PZTs with resonant frequencies of 2 and 0.25 MHz mounted on the two samples. Samples IGh2, IGh3, and IGf6 were chosen for checking differences in frequency analysis results depending on the resonant frequency of PZTs.
Data Processing
In the experiments, volumetric strain (εv) was calculated from εa and εr using \({\epsilon }_{v}={\epsilon }_{a}+2{\epsilon }_{r}\). All strain values were averaged from six strain gauges. During the initial stages of deformation, volumetric strain increases linearly with applied differential stress. The result for triaxial compression testing of thermally cracked Inada granites (IGh2) show that the samples underwent the pre-existing crack closure stage at ~15% of the peak stress. Therefore, the volumetric strain curve between 15% and 25% of the peak stress is presumed to be a linear region (i.e., one characterized by a linear relationship). In this study, the stress at which volumetric strain deviates from the linear region is defined as the onset of dilatancy. At high differential stress, unstable crack growth, which is termed “crack damage stress”, starts at a stress level between 70% and 85% of the peak stress, and this point corresponds to the maximum volumetric strain in the strain curve (Bieniawski 1967; Martin and Chandler 1994). In this study, the differential stress at the maximum volumetric strain is defined as crack damage stress.
AE events were recorded automatically by a fast waveform recording system, as described by Lei (2006). The signals detected from every PZT were pre-amplified by 40 dB and then fed into the waveform system. We digitized the AE signals with a sampling rate of 25 MHz and a sample length of 4096 words (~160 µs). AE waveform data were acquired by the following triggering logic. First, four transducers were selected as triggering sensors (p10, 13, 21, and 24 in sample IGh2-3 and p9, 10, 23, and 24 in samples IGh5, IGf6, and IGf8). These transducers were distributed homogeneously on the specimen surface to avoid deviation of triggering. An OR logic (triggering when at least one of selected inputs overshoots the threshold level) was used within the four transducers, which enabled us to record AE waveforms when any one of the transducers detected a signal exceeding the pre-defined threshold level (50 mV in this study). Triggered AE events were recorded using single-event mode, in which the waveform data were immediately transferred to the hard disk of the host PC and for which approximately two events per second can be recorded during the entire loading process. In the experiment involving sample IGf8, after the AE event rate increased, the system was switched to multi-event mode, in which approximately 5000 events per second can be recorded in the on-board memory. Thus, the number of AE events recorded for IGf8 was not comparable with other experiments. To investigate the relationship between cracking behavior and AE peak frequency, the frequency spectrum was obtained using FFT, as follows:
where A(t) is the original AE waveform, A(f) is the frequency spectrum, f is the frequency component of the signal, and t is the acquisition time of A(t). Using Equation (1), we utilized the original AE waveform (Fig. 3a) to obtain the frequency spectrum (Fig. 3b). In the frequency spectrum, the peak amplitude is the largest amplitude in the spectrum, and the peak frequency is the point at the peak amplitude (Fig. 3b). The transducer that recorded the most events was selected, and then the frequency spectrum characteristics were extracted from the signals recorded by the selected transducers. In the experiment involving sample IGh3, sensors p10 and p13 were chosen as the typical transducers with resonant frequencies of 1 and 0.5 MHz, respectively, and in the experiment involving IGh5, sensors p23 and p9 were selected as the representative instruments, with resonant frequencies of 2 and 0.25 MHz, respectively. In the case of fresh samples IGf6 and IGf8, p10 and p9 were used for frequency analysis as the typical sensors, with resonant frequencies of 1 or 2 MHz and 0.5 or 0.25 MHz, respectively. In addition, we selected the transducer close to a region where AE events are densely distributed (p3) and obtained the reanalyzed peak frequency from the signal detected by the selected transducer (detailed in section 3.3).
In addition to the peak frequency, we also estimated the corner frequency of the AE events. Crack models suggest that the P or S displacement spectrum is flat at low frequencies and decreases proportionally to f −2 at high frequencies (Aki 1967; Sato and Hirasawa 1973). The high- and low-frequency trends intersect at the so-called corner frequency, which is the key parameter used for estimating fault size and stress drop in seismology. The AE spectrum calibrated by the average values of the difference between the power spectral densities of PZT and laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) records is not flat and is roughly proportional to f 2 in the low-frequency domain (Lei et al. 2003). However, as the frequency response of PZTs was not calibrated using LDV in our experiments, it is difficult to consider the intersection between the fitting lines of f 2 and f −2 as the corner frequency. In this study, the frequency of the point marking the largest amplitude in the spectrum fitted by an autoregressive (AR) model (Akaike, 1998) was obtained as the corner frequency (Fig. 3c) and averaged over all sensors. The duration of the signal used for the spectral analysis was 20 µs from 5 µs before the first motion. The spectral analysis was performed on waveforms recorded by all PZTs, and the median value was extracted as the typical corner frequency at each event.
Experimental Results
Mechanical data and AE event rate
The maximum differential stress of thermally cracked granite under wet conditions ranged from 357 to 413 MPa, whereas that of fresh granite under wet conditions was 431 MPa (Table 2). After reaching peak stress, brittle fracture occurred rapidly in all of the experiments. Results for the thermally cracked samples indicate that dilatancy began at 27.1–32.7% of the peak stress and that crack damage stress started at 50.4–62.6% (Fig. 4a–c). For the fresh samples, dilatancy began at 29.8–36.7% and crack damage stress started at 58.2–68.5% of the peak stress (Fig. 4d, e). Systematic trends between the thermally cracked and fresh samples in strain behavior were not observed. Figure 4f–j shows differential stress and AE events rate obtained from the waveform recording system as functions of elapsed time. AE data obtained from the wet samples show that cracking activity was initiated at a stress level of ~85% of the peak stress in the sample using PZTs with a resonant frequency of 1 MHz (IGh2) (Fig. 4f). In contrast, the AE event rate began to increase at around the crack damage stress in the sample using PZTs with resonant frequencies of 1 and 0.5 MHz (Fig. 4g, IGh3). A similar behavior was observed for the sample using PZTs with resonant frequencies of 2 and 0.25 MHz (IGh5). From the above results, even in the experiments under wet conditions, it was possible to record a small amount of AE at the point of crack damage stress by adding PZTs with low-frequency bands (0.5 or 0.25 MHz). AE events in the fresh sample were successfully obtained by using PZTs with resonant frequencies of 1 and 0.5 MHz (Fig. 4i). After the differential stress reached ~50% of the expected peak stress in IGf8, the system was switched to multi-mode, meaning that the AE events rate increased rapidly from ~4 minutes before failure (Fig. 4j). This paper does not consider the number of AE counts in experiment IGf8.
Peak Frequency
The peak frequency of each AE event as a function of time for thermally cracked granites is shown in Figure 5. In all experiments, the peak frequency was distributed mainly in the range of 0–0.6 MHz. High-peak-frequency AE signals ranging from 0.6 to 2 MHz were detected only by PZTs with a high resonant frequency of 2 MHz. Focusing on the range of 0–0.6 MHz, the AE signals can be divided into two peak frequency bands. The peak frequency bands in IGh3 were distributed in similar bands: a low-frequency band of 0.1–0.25 and a high-frequency band of 0.25–0.45 MHz for the PZTs with resonant frequencies of 0.5 and 1 MHz (Fig. 5a, b). Results for PZTs with resonant frequencies of 0.5 and 1 MHz reveal that events with intermediate peak frequency of 0.2–0.3 MHz increased with increasing differential stress. In contrast, AE events recorded by the PZT with a resonant frequency of 0.25 MHz in IGh5 were divided into different bands: a low-frequency band of 0.05–0.15 and a high-frequency band of 0.2–0.3 MHz in the PZT with a resonant frequency of 0.25 MHz (Fig. 5c). As shown in Figure 5d, AE signals with lower frequencies were measured by the PZT with a resonant frequency of 2 MHz as differential stress was increased. The peak frequency of AE events in the fresh granites shows a similar distribution to that of events in the thermally cracked granites (Fig. 6). Signals with the resonant frequency of the PZT and its integer multiple frequencies are likely to be reflected in the frequency spectrum, and the frequency response of PZT sensors is not flat. Thus, the frequency bands of the peak frequency that resulted from the response of PZTs to harmonic waves are included in the AE signals. A PZT sensor with a resonant frequency of 2 MHz has a relatively uniform frequency response in the range of 0 to 0.6 MHz, as revealed by experiments (Lei et al., 2003). Thus, it is probable that the appearance of the events with lower frequencies recorded by the PZT with 2 MHz resonant frequency indicates the frequency characteristics that are independent of the resonant frequency of the PZT. The frequency characteristics recorded by PZTs with a 2 MHz resonant frequency are discussed in detail in the section “Discussion”.
Dominant Frequency
To clarify the relationship between the dominant frequency and cracking behavior, the peak frequency for PZTs with a resonant frequency of 2 MHz was compared with the corner frequency. After identifying a region where AE events are densely distributed (the center of the sample in this study) and a transducer with a small incidence angle and short distance from the region, we analyzed the waveform that was radiated from the region and recorded by the transducer. The peak frequency extracted by this process was designated as the “reanalyzed peak frequency”. Figure 7 shows the reanalyzed peak frequency and corner frequency as functions of time for both thermally cracked and fresh samples. The reanalyzed peak frequency was 0.4–0.5 MHz in the middle stage of loading and ranged from 0.1 to 0.5 MHz at the time close to failure. The tendency for the number of AE events dominated by low-frequency components to increase with loading can be observed from the results for corner frequency. The magnitude of the dominant frequency of AE is related to the source dimension (crack size). According to Sato and Hirasawa (1973), by assuming that the AE signal is radiated from the circular crack that grows at a constant velocity, the source dimension L can be expressed by the corner frequency of a P-wave, f0(P), as
where Cp is an implicit function of the rupture velocity as presented in Sato and Hirasawa (1973) and Vp is the P-wave velocity. The relationship expressed in Equation (2) indicates that the source dimension is inversely proportional to the corner frequency. Lei et al. (2003) reported that a corner frequency of 0.1 MHz corresponds roughly to a source dimension of 10–15 mm. As the corner frequency and reanalyzed peak frequency obtained in the present study have the same tendency during loading, it is considered that the increase in the number of AE events with low peak frequency with increasing differential stress represents the formation of macrocracks.