Investigation of mechanical and energy evolution characteristics for sandstone after high temperature damage under cyclic loading

During the production of underground engineering, investigating the mechanical behaviors of rock materials after high temperature damage is of great importance for controlling the stability of the underground structure. In this paper, for revealing the deformation and energy evolution laws of rock materials after high temperature damage under cyclic loading, a series of uniaxial compressive and cyclic loading experiments were conducted on sandstone after various high temperature damages, i.e., 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900°C, to study the effect of high temperature on primary wave velocity, microstructure, deformation, strength, energy, etc. It can be observed that the primary wave velocity and microstructure weakened seriously with the development of high temperature damage and the uniaxial compressive strength of samples increases toward the maximum value with a high temperature damage of 300°C and then decreases gradually. The energy proportion index was established to characterize the influence of high temperature damage and cyclic stress levels on energy evolution laws of samples. With an increase in temperature, compared with input energy, elastic strain energy proportion decreases and dissipated energy proportion rises up, which indicate that the property of samples transforms from elasticity to plasticity. Finally, the variation laws between the burst tendency of the sample and high temperature damage were well described by presenting the average elastic energy index, which provides references for studying failure characteristics of rock materials.