Influence of water saturation on rock failure - Implications for volcanic environments

Water plays several important roles in the grand scheme of volcanism. As magmatic water, it influences magma generation transport and emplacement/eruption via its influence on the physicochemical properties of melts (e.g. rheology, diffusion, surface tension). As external water, it's role is manifold: (1) it is the driving force for the phreatic explosions which often are precursory to volcanic eruptions, (2) it may mix with magma and fuel phreatomagmatic eruptions, and (3) it has the ability to weaken and destabilize volcanic structures. Previous studies have shown that even small amounts of water may substantially weaken the strength of rocks. However the study of volcanic rocks is, in this respect, sparse. For this study we chose both volcanic rocks and volcanic host rocks (ranging from volcaniclastic sandstone to dacite) and compare their behaviour to that of Bentheim sandstone, an iconic rock type in rock mechanics. Two different experimental approaches are combined in this study. Firstly, we investigated the failure of rock specimens by rapid decompression using a shock-tube apparatus. Therein a rock sample is slowly pressurized with argon gas up to a maximum pressure of 50 MPa and then rapidly decompressed to atmospheric conditions. The decompression rates in this facility reach the order of 10 GPa/s and higher, allowing us to interpret these experiments as dynamic direct tensile strength tests. The experiments were carried out with varying degrees of water saturation in a temperature range from 20 to 300 °C. The degree of water saturation influences the fragmentation threshold (the minimum applied pressure required to fully fragment a sample) as well as the speed of the fragmentation process. Secondly, uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) tests and Brazilian tests were carried out to investigate, respectively, the compressive and (indirect) tensile strengths of dry and water-saturated samples. UCS tests were performed on 80 x 40mm cylinders under a strain rate of 10-5 s-1 and Brazil tests were performed using 40 x 40mm discs mounted along length in a brazil jig, subsequently loaded in a uniaxial press at a rate of 200N/s. For all sample sets we observe a reduction in compressive and tensile strength as well as in fragmentation threshold with water saturation, with the dacitic samples showing the least weakening. The coupling of tensile strengths and decompression thresholds in the presence of water provides better constraints on the occurrence of phreatic explosions and their related hazards. The observed strength reduction provides a vital input parameter for the analysis of the stability of volcanic edifices.