岩石热开裂的实验研究

Micro-cracks appeared between the boundaries of different minerals of rocks during heating process, because of different thermal expansion coefficients of minerals, this phenomenon is referred as thermal cracking of rocks. The transport property of rocks was changed greatly due to the thermal cracking induced micro-cracks network, for example, the permeability of carbonate increases about 10 times when the temperature arise from room temperature to 110～120℃. Thermal cracking of rocks is a new research field of rock physics, which related closely to rock mechanics, mineralogy as well as experimental technology. The thermal cracking experiments of various rocks were performed, the rock macroscopic properties such as porosity, permeability, velocities of elastic waves in rocks were obtained as a function of temperature of heating process, and the microscopic structures of rocks were observed by using Scanning Electro-Microscope (SEM). The mechanism and the theoretical model of thermal cracking of rocks are given at present paper. Finally, the potential implication of rock thermal cracking to petroleum industry is discussed.