A Lateral Unconfined Swelling Test for Swelling Rocks

A simple experimental equipment and test scheme is designed to estimate the swelling deformation under the lateral unconfined condition with coupling effect of uniaxial load and water-rock interaction. This paper carried out the swelling test under the lateral unconfined condition and analyzed the qualities of lateral unconfined swelling of weak swelling rock by applying simple self-designed saturated equipment to the swelling test on the platform of microcomputer-controlled rock shear rheological tester RYL-600. As a result of this study, the following conclusions were derived: (1) considering the coupling effect of load and water, the stress level is considerably lower than the mudstone-saturated uniaxial compressive strength, and it is discovered that the coupling effect is striking. (2) The swelling reveals the demonstrable time effect, which increases rapidly at the beginning of the swelling deformation, and after that, the deformation tends to maintain a certain value. (3) Both the rate and the scale of swelling deformation are restrained by the axial load.