Mechanical behavior and thermal damage characterization of granite after flame jet-water cooling treatment

Flame jet-assisted mechanical rock drilling is expected to solve the hard-rock crushing challenges in underground engineering such as mining, tunneling, and drilling. Therefore, it is important to investigate mechanical behavior of the rock after flame jet-water cooling treatment. In this paper, granite blocks were subjected to flame jet-water cooling treatment, which means the rapid heating of the granite using a flame with a temperature of 1564 degrees C, followed by water cooling. Then, physico-mechanical behaviors of samples at different distances (all the distances mentioned later mean the vertical distance between the sample axis and the flame jet-water cooling path) were measured. Results showed physico-mechanical parameters of the sample increased as the distance increased. The Vp (P-wave velocity), UCS (uniaxial compressive strength) and BTS (Brazilian tensile strength) of the samples increased from 3171.7 m/s, 84.84 MPa and 5.01 MPa at 0 mm to 3619.3 m/s, 145.86 MPa and 7.30 MPa at 70 mm, respectively. Meanwhile, physico-mechanical parameters of samples at 70 mm all reached more than 95 % of those of untreated samples. As the distance increased, cumulative AE counts at peak stress gradually enhanced, and failure modes of uniaxial samples shifted from shear to tensile splitting failure. The SEM (scanning electron microscope) images illustrated that the closer to the flame jet-water cooling path, the more thermal cracks produced in the sample. Meanwhile, the damage factor can well characterize the thermal damage degree of granite. According to the variation of physico-mechanical parameters and SEM images of samples with distances, it can be assumed that the thermal damage width of granite after flame jet-water cooling was about 140 mm. It was much greater than the 50 mm width of spalling pits, which greatly increased the feasibility of thermal-assisted mechanical rock drilling. The tensile stress induced by the temperature gradient below the spalling pit is the fundamental cause of thermal damage to the rock, which is further aggravated by water cooling. The findings can provide some guidance for flame jet-assisted mechanical rock drilling.