Shock compression of geological materials

Abstract

Understanding the shock compression of geological materials is important for many applications, and is particularly important to the mining industry. During blast mining the response to shock loading determines the wave propagation speed and resulting fragmentation of the rock. The present work has studied the Hugoniot of two geological materials; Lake Quarry Granite and Gosford Sandstone. For samples of these materials, the composition was characterised in detail. The Hugoniot of Lake Quarry Granite was predicted from this information as the material is fully dense and was found to be in good agreement with the measured Hugoniot. Gosford Sandstone is porous and undergoes compaction during shock loading. Such behaviour is similar to other granular material and we show how it can be described using a P-a compaction model. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.