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Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861
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Investigation of three different cooling treatments on

dynamic mechanical properties and fragmentation characteristics
of granite subjected to thermal cycling
Lifeng Fan, Han Li, Yan Xi ⇑
Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China

Received 13 September 2021; received in revised form 17 October 2021; accepted 15 December 2021
Available online 24 February 2022

Abstract

Underground thermal engineering such as geothermal exploitation usually involves the response of impact loads due to the drilling
operation and blasting load. This study investigated the dynamic mechanical properties and fragmentation characteristics of granite sub-
jected to thermal cycling under natural cooling, water cooling, and liquid nitrogen cooling. Firstly, split Hopkinson pressure bar tests
were performed on granite under three different cooling methods to study the dynamic mechanical parameters with thermal cycles. Sub-
sequently, the damage factors were calculated to evaluate the damage on granite and the relationship between damage and stress. Finally,
the granite fragments after impact were sieved, and the fractal dimension and average fragment size were introduced to analyze the frag-
mentation characteristics. The results demonstrate that the degradation of dynamic mechanical properties mainly occurs in the first four
thermal cycles; with the increase of damage factor, the stress decreases linearly under the three cooling methods, and the damage caused
by liquid nitrogen cooling to granite is the most significant, followed by water cooling. Fragments of granite change from axial splitting
failure to a more complex composite failure mode. In addition, with the decrease of the average fragment size, the fractal dimension of
the granite gradually increases, resulting in the higher fragmentation degree and the better uniformity of fragmentation.

Keywords: Split Hopkinson pressure bar; Dynamic mechanical properties; Fragmentation characteristics; Cooling treatment

1 Introduction During the construction of geothermal energy mining

Geothermal energy has attracted considerable attention
as a renewable clean new energy, with good stability, envi-
ronmental friendliness, and low cost compared with tradi-
tional fossil energy and other low-carbon energy
(Nasruddin et al., 2016; Noorollahi et al., 2019; Zhu
et al., 2020a). The most preferred geothermal energy
exploitation reservoir is generally located 5–6 km under-
ground, with a temperature of 150–500 °C (Gallup, 2009;
Breede et al., 2013), and hot dry rock is a typical circum-
stance of geothermal energy storage.
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: xiyan@bjut.edu.cn (Y. Xi).
injection-production wells, drilling operation requires bit
impact to destroy rock mass, low-temperature drilling fluid
such as water or LN2 is injected into hot rock to improve
drilling efficiency (Zeng et al., 2013; Zhao et al., 2015). Fur-
thermore, to extract underground hot-dry-rock geothermal
energy, water or LN2 fluid circulates in the hot fractured
reservoir, and then transports heat quantity to the ground
surface to achieve underground Utilization of heat energy
(Zhu et al., 2020b). The geothermal reservoir rock is heated
and rapidly cooled in cycles in this process, showing differ-
ent mechanical properties from traditional hot rocks. In
addition, underground engineering construction is dis-
turbed by widespread blasting load; the dynamic load gen-
erated by explosion involves a strain rate of 10
1–10
3 s
1,
which relates to the short-term dynamic behavior of the

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.undsp.2021.12.010
2467-9674/Ó 2021 Tongji University. Publishing Services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
848 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861
rock (Ambrosini & Luccioni, 2020). Compared with the
static performance, the rock exhibits different mechanical
properties. Therefore, studying the dynamic behavior of
rocks after different heat/cold cycles is of great significance
for drilling rock breaking and ensuring the engineering sta-
bility of surrounding rock.
Experimental research on the mechanical properties of
rocks after cycle heating has been performed.
Mahmutoglu (1998) conducted uniaxial compression,
Brazilian and triaxial tests to explore the mechanical prop-
erties of Carrara marble and Buchberg sandstone suffering
up to 16 thermal cycles. The results demonstrated that as
the number of cycles increases, the compressive strength
and tensile strength of rock gradually decrease, and the
reduction is most prominent in the first cycle. Li and Ju
(2018) investigated the effect of different temperature ther-
mal cycles on the physical and mechanical properties of
granite. It was pointed out that the physical and mechani-
cal properties of granite decrease significantly after the first
thermal cycle and remain stable after 20 thermal cycles.
Rong et al. (2018) studied the macroscopic and micro-
scopic mechanical properties of two kinds of bedrock. It
was indicated that the degradation of rock macroscopic
properties is primarily due to the formation of grain
boundaries and intragranular microcracks in the rock sam-
ple under thermal stress. The above studies were all cooled
to room temperature and naturally exposed to an open-air
environment. Previous research results have revealed that
the rock specimens represent different mechanical
responses and failure modes after heating and cooling
treatment owing to the difference in cooling rate (Brotóns
et al., 2013; Kumari et al., 2017; Rathnaweera et al.,
2018; Shao et al., 2014). Subsequently, as the most com-
monly used cooling method in geothermal mining, water
cooling has been widely studied in recent years.
According to the result of Zhu et al. (2020b, 2021), the
rapid cooling of water aggravates the degradation of the
physical and mechanical properties of granite. Xu and
Sun (2018) conducted a Brazilian split test to investigate
the effect of quenching cycles on the tensile strength of
granite at different temperatures. It was demonstrated that
the tensile strength of the rock is negatively correlated with
the temperature and the number of quenching cycles.
Meanwhile, acoustic emission technology was used to
study the effects of cycle water cooling (Kumari et al.,
2017; Ge & Sun, 2018). It is revealed that water cooling
leads to the development of microcracks, which further
degrades strength. Wei et al. (2020) investigated the micro/-
macro crack characteristics of the sample under the circu-
lating water cooling combined with integrated acoustic
emission technology and digital image correlation technol-
ogy. The results showed that as the number of heating and
water cooling cycles increases, internal micro-cracks grow,
resulting in a significant decrease in P-wave velocity and a
considerable loss of strength and rigidity. Farther, scan-
ning electron microscopy (Chen et al., 2017; Yin et al.,
2019) and X-ray micro-computed tomography (Fan, Xu,
& Wu, 2020; Kumari et al., 2018) were applied to reveal
the effect of water cooling on the macroscopic physical
and mechanical properties of rock.
Previous studies mainly focused on the effect of repeated
thermal cycles on the static behavior of rocks. However,
the response to dynamic loads is often involved in actual
engineering (Fan et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2019b). Split Hop-
kinson pressure bar (SHPB) is currently one of the most
popular dynamic loading technology at medium and high
strain rates (Wang et al., 2016). A series of researches have
been carried out using SHPB to study the dynamic
mechanical properties of rocks under thermal treatment,
involving dynamic compressive strength (Liu & Xu, 2013;
Huang & Xia, 2015), tensile strength (Yin et al., 2015),
fracture toughness (Yin, Li, Xia, & Huang, 2012) under
high strain rate loading. However, there are few reports
on the coupling effect of thermal cycling and dynamic load-
ing. Only Wang et al. (2016) studied the dynamic mechan-
ical properties of red sandstone under repeated thermal
shocks. Meanwhile, the previous studies on the different
cooling methods of the rocks were insufficient. In addition
to natural cooling and water cooling, the effect of cryogenic
LN2 fracturing on dynamic mechanical properties of rocks
needs to be further studied as a more efficient stimulation
measure.
In the present study, granites with 0, 1, 4, 8, 12, and 16
thermal cycles were prepared to investigate the effect of dif-
ferent heating/cooling cycles on the dynamic mechanical
properties under natural, water, and LN2 cooling. The
SHPB dynamic impact test was conducted. Then, the evo-
lutions of dynamic strength, strain, and Young’s modulus
were compared. The crushing characteristics of the rock
were analyzed through the sieving experiment. The rela-
tionship between dynamic strength and damage was
discussed.
2 Experiment materials and text procedure
2.1 Material preparation and X-ray diffraction analysis
The fine-grained granite in this study was collected from
Yueyang City, Hunan Province, China. According to the
method recommended by the international society for rock
mechanics (ISRM), all samples were processed into stan-
dard rock samples with a diameter of 50 mm and a height
of 25 mm (Fig. 1) to satisfy the stress uniformity assump-
tion (Dai et al., 2010; Wang & Hao, 2017). And then, both
ends of the sample were carefully polished to ensure that
the surface flatness was within 0.05 mm (Fan et al.,
2017). The samples without obvious surface defects were
selected to measure the P-wave velocities. Subsequently,
the samples with similar P-wave velocities were chosen to
investigate the mechanical properties to reduce the initial
difference.
X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) test was conducted
and the results illustrated that the sample is mainly com-
 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861
(a) Intact samples
= 50 mm
= 50 mm
h = 25 mm
(b) Geometric dimension (c) Cross section
Fig. 1. Granite specimens.
posed of quartz (31.0%), potash feldspar (27.7%), plagio-
clase (22.6%), and mica (11%), as shown in Fig. 2.
2.2 Thermal cycle of different cooling
Five hundred centigrade was chosen as the determined
temperature of the thermal cycle, as the most preferred
geothermal energy exploitation reservoir is usually located
5–6 km underground, and the temperature is 150–500 °C
(Breede et al., 2013). The samples were first heated to the
target temperature in an SG-XL 1200 high-temperature
box at a low heating rate of 5 °C/min. Such a low heating
rate was applied to avoid the potential thermal shock dur-
ing the heating process (Shao et al., 2015). After reaching
Fig. 2. XRD results of the granite (h represents the diffraction angle).
849
the target temperature, the samples were kept in the heat-
ing box for 3 hours to ensure uniform temperature distribu-
tion. Subsequently, the samples were put into water and
LN2 for rapid cooling and an open atmosphere for natural
cooling. This process represents a complete heating and
cooling cycle. Finally, all samples were put into a high-
temperature oven and dried at 105 °C for 24 hours.
Another set of unheated samples were also prepared for
comparison. The number of thermal cycles in this study
was 0 (without heat treatment), 1, 4, 8, 12, and 16, respec-
tively. Figure 3 shows a schematic of the heating and cool-
ing paths. According to the studies of Kim et al. (2014), the
cooling rate was the highest due to the maximum thermal
gradient at the beginning of the cooling process and then
decreased in a nonlinear manner.
2.3 SHPB experiment
A 50 mm diameter SHPB was used for the dynamic
impact test, which consists of a gas gun, launching tube,
striker, incident bar, transmission bar, and absorbing bar,
as shown in Fig. 4. All bars are made of high-strength alloy
structural steel with a density of 7850 kg/m3 and Young’s
modulus of 210 GPa; The lengths of the striker, incident
bar, and transmission bar are 400, 1500, and 1500 mm,
respectively. The conical striker with a particular shape
effectively smooths the rising front of the loading wave,
which is suitable for high strain rate loading of heteroge-
neous brittle materials (Wang et al., 2019), eliminating
the high-frequency oscillation of stress wave in dynamic
testing to realize uniform deformation and stress balance
during loading (Zhang & Zhao, 2014).
The granite sample is sandwiched between the incident
bar and the transmission bar, and both ends of the sample
are coated with Vaseline to reduce the end friction. The gas
gun is controlled to shoot out the striker and impact the
free end of the incident bar. Subsequently, a longitudinal
compression pulse will be generated in the incident bar
and propagated to the sample. Due to the different wave
impedances of the sample and the elastic bars, the incident
pulse can be transmitted and reflected. According to the
incident and the reflected signal recorded by the strain
gauge fixed on the incident bar, and the transmission signal
recorded on the transmission bar, based on the one-
dimensional stress wave theory, the stress rðtÞ, strain eðtÞ,
and strain rate e_ ðtÞ can be calculated by the following for-
mula (Chakraborty et al., 2016):
8
>
> rðtÞ ¼ 2AAS EðeI þ eR þ eT Þ
< Rt
eðtÞ ¼ LCs 0 ðeI
eR
eT Þdt ; ð1Þ
>
>
: e_ ðtÞ ¼ C ðe
e
e Þ
Ls I R T
where A and AS represent the cross-sectional area of the
elastic bar and the specimen (mm2), respectively; LS is the
length of the sample, (mm); C and E denote the elastic
wave velocity (m/s) and Young’s modulus (GPa) of the
bar, respectively.
850 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861

3 Experimental results
3.1 Observation of the surface micro-cracks
Considering the different thermal cycles and cooling
methods, the samples after thermal cycling and cooling
were observed and compared, as shown in Fig. 5. Accord-
ing to the previous study, it could be known that the occur-
rence of microcracks is due to the thermal stress exceeding
the tensile strength of the sample (Sha et al., 2020). Figure 5
shows that the sample after one thermal cycle has no obvi-
ous microcracks that appear under the three cooling meth-
ods and exhibits good integrity, illustrating that the granite
sample is subjected to significant thermal stress during
heating and cooling treatment, but the stress value does
not exceed its tensile strength. With the increase of the
number of thermal cycles, tiny microcracks first appear
on the surface of the LN2-cooled sample after four thermal
cycles, while the natural cooled and water-cooled samples
still present fairly integrity.
With the further increase in the number of thermal
cycles, as shown in Fig. 6, obvious macrocracks appear
on both water-cooled and LN2-cooled samples after eight
thermal cycles. Afterward, the cracks further expand. After
12 thermal cycles, the size of the cracks of the water-cooled
and LN2-cooled samples become larger. When the thermal
cycles reach 16 times, the surface cracks continue to initiate
and extend, resulting in more and broader cracks, which
indicates that the higher cooling rate causes more signifi-
cant thermal shock damage to granite samples. In addition,
under the same thermal cycles, the width of thermal crack
caused by LN2 cooling is more prominent than that caused
by water cooling. This is mainly because of the consider-
able temperature gradient and faster cooling rate caused
by LN2 cooling, which causes more thermal shock damage
than natural cooling and water cooling (see Fig. 7).
3.2 Evolution of dynamic properties
In the SHPB tests, the effect of loading rate has been
extensively studied (Wu et al., 2010; Dai et al., 2016; Fan
et al., 2020). The present study mainly focuses on the influ-
ence of different cooling methods on the dynamic mechan-
ical behavior of thermal cycling granite specimens.
Consequently, the air pressure is uniformly set to
0.50 MPa, and the bullet is launched from the same posi-

Fig. 3. Test scheme of the cycle heating and different cooling treatments.

Fig. 4. SHPB system.

 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861 851

tion each time. A tapered bullet is used to generate a
smooth half-sine incident wave at the leading edge of the
ascending section to achieve dynamic stress balance
(Zhou et al., 2012). Subsequently, the typical dynamic
stress balance at both ends of the sample during the impact
test was recorded. The electric signal of the incident wave
plus the electric sign of the reflected wave is equal to the
electric signal of the transmitted wave, indicating that the
dynamic stress on the sample has reached equilibrium (as
shown in Fig. 8).
Natural cooling Water cooling
3.2.1 Dynamic stress–strain curves
The stress–strain curves of thermal cycling granite under
different cooling methods are calculated by Eq. (1), as
shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen from the figure that all
the curves represent a similar shape trend, which are
mainly divided into three stages according to the previous
study (Yang et al., 2020). The first stage occurs in the first
half of the curve rising stage, and the stress practically
increases linearly with increasing strain, showing a certain
degree of elasticity in this range. In the second stage, with
LN2 cooling

1st cycle No visible micro-

cracks appeared

4 cycles Micro-cracks first

appeared in LN2
a cooled samples

Fig. 5. Surface observation after thermal cycle (1 cycle & 4 cycles).

Natural cooling Water cooling LN2 cooling

b
Visible cracks
appeared in both
8 cycles
water and LN2
c cooled samples

a
Larger cracks
e appeared in water
12 cycles and LN2 cooled
d
specimens

h
More cracks
g appeared in water
16 cycles
and LN2 cooled
samples
f

Fig. 6. Surface observation after thermal cycle (8 cycles, 12 cycles, and 16 cycles).
852 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861

Fig. 7. Micro-cracks after thermal cycle of different cooling treatment.

the further increase of strain, the stress is nonlinear and ation pattern with different cooling; to be specific, it
grows to the peak value, and the microcrack propagates decreases as the number of thermal cycles increases. How-
rapidly in this stage. During the third stage, the stress ever, the corresponding decline rate slows down, and the
and strain are negatively correlated, the stress decreases rapid change in peak stress occurs in the first four cycles,
with the increase of strain, and the rock is destroyed at this especially for the first thermal cycle, where the stress drops
stage. sharply and then steadily and slowly.
Figure 9 also indicates that the specimen’s dynamic peak Figure 10 also indicates that different cooling methods
strength decreases with the increase of the number of ther- have a significant effect on the mechanical properties of
mal cycles under the three cooling modes, which is the granite. It can be seen that the peak stress of granite
result of the generation and propagation of cracks due to decreases more significantly in the heating-rapid cooling
the enormous thermal stress caused by heating and cooling. cycle of water and LN2, and the stress difference between
At the same time, the peak strain increases with the different cooling methods becomes more evident with the
increase of thermal cycles, which indicates that the heating increase of thermal cycles. In addition, the stress degrada-
treatment increases the plasticity of granite samples. These tion of the granite after LN2 cooling is the most serious,
changes are pronounced after the first thermal cycle and which is due to the temperature difference as high as
tend to be stable with the increase of thermal cycles. 696 °C between the extremely low temperature of LN2
In addition, it is worth noting that in some cases, the (
196 °C) and the heat-treated samples (500 °C). The con-
stress–strain curve rebounds obviously, and the strain siderable temperature gradient causes more intense thermal
decreases with the decrease of stress, indicating that the
granite after heat treatment is still a relatively complete
rock with a specific bearing capacity. This phenomenon
occurs in the first eight thermal cycles of natural cooling,
and with the increase of the number of thermal cycles,
the rebound phenomenon gradually weakens. However,
there is no rebound phenomenon in the stress–strain curves
of the samples under water cooling and LN2 cooling. This
is because the considerable temperature gradient caused by
rapid cooling produces tremendous thermal stress and
causes more damage to the samples. As a result, under
the same impact pressure, the damage degree of the sam-
ples under water cooling and LN2 cooling is more remark-
able, which will also be discussed in the following chapters.

3.2.2 Peak stress, strain and Young’s modulus

Figure 10 plots the relationship between the peak stress
and thermal cycles under three cooling methods. The
results illustrate that the peak stress exhibits a similar vari- Fig. 8. Dynamic stress equilibrium for a typical specimen.
 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861
Fig. 9. Stress–strain curves of different thermal cycles: (a) Typical curve (12 cycles of water cooling), (b) natural cooling, (c) water cooling, and (d) LN2
cooling.
shock, leading to the most significant effect on the stress of
granite under the same thermal cycle treatment.
Figure 11 illustrates the peak strain of granite specimens
under different cooling methods. The trend of the curve
shows that with the increase of the thermal cycles, the peak
strain under the three cooling ways increases in various
degrees, indicating that the heating treatment increases
the plasticity of the granite sample. The average peak strain
of granite before heat treatment is 0.75%, and it increases
significantly by 40.0%, 56.0%, and 58.7% after the first
thermal cycle, corresponding to natural cooling, water
cooling, and LN2 cooling. When the number of thermal
cycles increases to four, the peak strain increases by
54.7%, 62.7%, and 66.7% in the three cooling methods.
Subsequently, the growth rate of strain gradually slows
down. Compared with the eighth thermal cycle, the peak
strain increases by 3.33%, 2.36%, and 1.94%, respectively,
after 16 thermal cycles, indicating a slowdown in growth.
Therefore, the peak strain increments mainly occur in the
several initial cycles.
Moreover, compared with the untreated sample, the
peak strain of the specimen after heat treatment signifi-
cantly increases; simultaneously, the strain increase is more
pronounced for water and LN2 cooling than natural cool-
853
ing under the same thermal cycles, indicating that rapid
cooling increases the peak strain of granite. In addition,
the peak strain increment caused by LN2 cooling is the lar-
gest among the three cooling methods regardless of the
thermal cycles. This is mainly because the rapid cooling
of LN2 causes the high-temperature granite specimens to
withstand tremendous thermal stress and produce more
cracks, and the increase in peak strain is also the result
of cracks and propagation during heating and cooling
(Wu et al., 2019a).
Young’s modulus is a quantitative index to characterize
the elastic properties of rock. The dynamic Young’s mod-
ulus of the sample was obtained by the secant slope of
the two-point line with the peak stress of 40% and 60%
in the rising section of the stress–strain curve (Liu & Xu,
2015). The calculation formula is as follows:
r0:6
r0:4
ES ¼ ; ð2Þ
e0:6
e0:4
where ES denotes the dynamic Young’s modulus (GPa);
r0:6 and r0:4 represent 60% and 40% of the peak stress
(MPa), respectively; e0:6 and e0:4 indicate the corresponding
strain (dimensionless).
854 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861
Fig. 10. Evolution of different thermal cycles on peak stress.
Figure 12 reveals the variation of Young’s modulus of
thermal cycling treated granite subject to natural, water,
and LN2 cooling. Similar to the changing trend of peak
strength, Young’s modulus decreases with increasing ther-
mal cycles due to the microcracks caused by thermal effects
(Li & Ju, 2018). As the thermal cycles increase from zero to
one, Young’s modulus drops sharply, from the 42.54 GPa
of the untreated samples to 24.79, 20.41, and 20.23 GPa of
the three cooling treatments, respectively. With the thermal
cycles further increase to 16 cycles, the value of Young’s
modulus of the natural-cooled sample tends to be stable
and basically no longer decrease. Young’s modulus contin-
ues to decline slowly for the rapid cooling of water and
LN2, reducing from 20.41 and 20.23 GPa in 1 thermal cycle
to 16.93 and 16.05 GPa in 16 thermal cycles, and the
decrease rate significantly slows down.
In addition, Young’s moduli of the water-cooled sample
and the LN2-cooled sample are always lower than that of
Fig. 11. Evolution of strain in different thermal cycles.
the natural cooling regardless of the thermal cycle treat-
ments, indicating that rapid cooling caused more thermal
damage to the rock. Further, because of the maximum tem-
perature gradient of the LN2-cooled sample, Young’s mod-
ulus is always the lowest under the same thermal cycles,
which illustrates that LN2 cooling has the most significant
influence on granite.
3.3 Evolution of fragmentation degree
After the SHPB test, the rock fragments were collected
to compare the degree of rock fragmentation after different
cooling and thermal cycles, as shown in Fig. 13. The figure
illustrates that under the same cooling treatment, the frag-
mentation degree of the granite gradually increases with
the increase of thermal cycles, from a large block at room
temperature to a small block even powder after 16 thermal
cycles. Under natural cooling conditions, axial splitting
failure occurs in the first eight thermal cycles; nevertheless,
the fragmentation degree is relatively small. Subsequently,
with the increase of thermal cycles, it exhibits a more com-
plex composite failure mode, and the fragmentation degree
gradually increases. For the rapid cooling of water and
LN2, the axial splitting failure of the sample only occurs
in the first thermal cycle. As the number of thermal cycles
increases to four, the fragmentation degree of the sample
increases significantly and is accompanied by powder gen-
eration. With the further growth of the thermal cycles to
16, the fragmentation degree of the sample reaches the
maximum under the respective cooling treatment, with
the most significant number of cuttings and the smallest
size.
In addition, with the same thermal cycles, there are sig-
nificant differences in the size of the fragments under differ-
ent cooling methods. The fragmentation degree of the
water and LN2 cooling samples is significantly greater than
that of natural cooling. This is because the thermal stress
Fig. 12. Evolution of Young’s modulus in different thermal cycles.
 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861 855

generated during the rapid cooling process induces more
cracks in the rock, resulting in a greater degree of fracture
under the same thermal cycles. Furthermore, in the first
four thermal cycles, the fragmentation degrees of the
water-cooled sample and the LN2-cooled sample are rela-
tively close. As the number of thermal cycles increases,
the fragmentation degree of the water-cooled sample is
gradually more significant than that of the LN2-cooled
sample. Similarly, this may be because the repeated water
invasion weakens the connection between mineral particles

Without thermal treatment

Natural cooling Water cooling LN2 cooling

1 cycle

4 cycles

8 cycles

12 cycles

16 cycles

Fig. 13. Evolution of fragments in different thermal cycles.

856 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861

when the sample is subjected to multiple thermal cycles, defined as the ratio of dynamic peak stress and E after
leading to more efficient fragmentation of the water- specific heat-cooling cycle to corresponding untreated
cooled sample. indicators.
According to the attenuation model function,
4 Discussions (Mutlutürk Altindag, and Türk, 2004) the normalized
dynamic peak stress and E of granite are fitted with an
4.1 Thermal shock damage evolution exponential function, as shown in Figs. 15 and 16. Accord-
ing to the relevant results, after the first thermal cycle of
The above experimental results indicate that heating and three cooling treatments, the reduction of normalized
cooling treatment produces apparent thermal shock dam- dynamic peak stress and E is very significant. With the
age to granite. The thermal damage factor related to increase of the number of heat cycles, the reduction rate
Young’s modulus was defined in this study to evaluate slows down obviously and eventually stabilizes. At the
the damage degree of rock caused by thermal cycle heating same time, the reduction of normalized dynamic peak
and cooling based on the elastic strain theory. The formula stress and E after water and LN2 cooling is more significant
is as follows (Sha et al., 2020): than that after natural cooling, which may be caused by the
EN stronger thermal shock after rapid cooling. In addition,
DE ¼ 1
; ð3Þ
E0
where DE represents the impact damage factor calculated
based on the dynamic Young’s modulus (dimensionless);
EN and E0 denote the dynamic Young’s moduli of samples
and untreated samples after N thermal cycles of cooling
(GPa), respectively.
The evolution of the impact damage factor with different
cycles of heating and cooling is illustrated in Fig. 14. The
figure reveals that thermal cycling and cooling have a sig-
nificant influence on the impact damage. Under the three
cooling treatments, the values of the impact damage factor
increase with the increase of thermal cycles, indicating that
the damage gradually aggravates, and the change is most
significant after the first thermal cycle, rising to 0.417,
0.520, and 0.524, respectively.
With the continuous increase of thermal cycles, the
impact damage factor hardly increases under natural cool-
ing from the first thermal cycle to 16 thermal cycles. For
the rapid cooling of water and LN2, the impact damage Fig. 14. Evolution of damage factor based on dynamic Young’s modulus.
continues to grow slowly, but the rate is significantly slower
than that of the zero-to-one thermal cycle. After 16 thermal
cycles, the impact damage factor values are 0.459, 0.602,
and 0.623 under natural, water, and LN2 cooling.
Figure 14 also shows that the impact damage factor
caused by LN2 cooling is always significant regardless of
the thermal cycles, followed by water cooling, and the dif-
ference between the two is slight, while the damage factor
of natural cooling is significantly lower than those of the
two rapidly cooled samples. This fully shows that the
high-temperature rock after rapid cooling is more likely
to be damaged under impact load.

4.2 Deterioration characteristics of the dynamic mechanical

properties

4.2.1 Evolution of normalized dynamic peak stress and E

The dynamic peak strength and Young’s modulus after
impact compression are normalized to reveal the degrada-
tion rate of granite subjected to the heating-cooling cycle. Fig. 15. Evolution of Normalized dynamic peak stress in different thermal
Normalized dynamic peak stress and normalized E are cycles.
 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861
Fig. 16. Evolution of Normalized E in different thermal cycles.
Fig. 17. Relationship between normalized dynamic peak stress and
damage.
during the LN2 cooling cycle, the rapid drop in tempera-
ture makes the deterioration of granite’s physical and
mechanical properties more serious. However, as the num-
ber of thermal cycles increases, the degradation gradually
stabilizes in three cooling treatments, which means that
once the thermal cycle reaches a certain number of itera-
tions (12 in this study), the physical and mechanical prop-
erties remain unchanged.
4.2.2 Correlation between normalized dynamic peak stress
and impact damage
Actually, the physical and mechanical properties of the
rock are closely related to thermal shock damage (Sha
et al., 2020). Figure 17 denotes the relationship between
normalized dynamic peak stress and impact damage factor.
The figure indicates that the normalized dynamic peak
857
stress is negatively correlated with the impact damage fac-
tor; as the impact damage increases, the normalized
dynamic peak stress declines linearly. At the same time,
the slope of the fitting curve indicates that the decline rate
of normalized strength with impact damage of the LN2-
cooled sample is the most rapid, followed by the water-
cooled sample, and the decline rate of the natural cooling
sample is the slowest, further indicating that the LN2 cool-
ing causes tremendous damage to the sample and makes
the strength drop most significantly.
4.3 Average fragment size and fractal dimension
To quantitatively evaluate the degree of rock fragmenta-
tion, standard sieves with different pore sizes (2.0, 5.0, 10.0,
20.0, and 40.0 mm) were applied for sieving experiments.
Then, to characterize the fragmentation degree of rock ,
the average fragment size is defined as (Xu & Liu, 2012):

X X
d¼ ðri d i Þ= ri ; ð4Þ


where d is the average fragment size (mm), d i represents the
average size of fragments in standard sieves of different
grades (mm), and ri denotes the mass percentage of frag-
ments corresponding to d i (Dimensionless).
Figure 18 shows the variation of average fragment size
with the number of thermal cycles. The results illustrate
that under different cooling treatments, the average frag-
ment size decreases with the increase of thermal cycles,
indicating that the granite’s fragmentation degree gradu-
ally increases, and the exponential function can well fit
the relationship between them. From zero to four thermal
cycles, the average fragment size declines rapidly in the
three cooling treatments, and the fragmentation degree
increases rapidly, from 25.86 mm in the zero thermal cycle
(untreated sample) to 17.41, 14.57, and 15.45 mm after the
four thermal cycles, respectively. Subsequently, the decline
Fig. 18. Evolution of average fragment size in different thermal cycles.
858 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861

rate gradually slows down. When the number of thermal

cycles increases to 16, the average fragment size decreases
to 11.73, 4.28, and 7.95 mm, respectively.
It can also be seen from the figure that under the same
number of thermal cycles, the decline amplitude of the
average fragment size of the sample under different cooling
modes is also different. At any number of thermal cycles,
the average fragment size of water-cooled and LN2-
cooled samples is significantly lower than that of natural-
cooled samples, indicating that rapid cooling makes the
granite more fragmented. In addition, in the first four ther-
mal cycles, the difference between the average fragment
sizes of water-cooled and LN2-cooled samples is tiny. After
four thermal cycles, the average fragment size of LN2-
cooled samples is 5.70% higher than that of water-cooled
samples. With the increase of the number of thermal cycles,
the difference between the two gradually increases, and it
has been 46.16% higher by the time of 16 thermal cycles,
indicating that the fragmentation degree of water-cooled
samples is the largest. This is consistent with the macro-
scopic fragmentation characteristic of the sample.
In recent years, the fractal theory has been widely used
in rock mechanics (Xu & Liu, 2012). To better describe
the distribution of rock fragments after impact crushing,
fractal dimension is cited to analyze the distribution char-
acteristics and fragmentation degree of impact fragmenta-
tion fragments. According to the mass frequency
relationship, the distribution equation of rock impact frag-
mentation can be obtained as follows:
3
D
MðxÞ=MðT Þ ¼ ðx=xm Þ ; ð5Þ
where M(T) and M(x) represent the total mass of frag-
ments and the cumulative mass under the sieve (g), respec-
tively; x and xm denote the particle size and maximum
particle size of fragments respectively (mm); D reveals the
fractal dimension of fragment distribution (dimensionless).
Take the logarithm of both sides of the equation at the
same time to get:
lg½MðxÞ=MðT Þ ¼ ð3
DÞ lgðx=xm Þ: ð6Þ
In the double logarithmic coordinate system shown in
lg½MðxÞ=MðT Þ–lg x, the least square method is used for
data fitting, and the slope of the fitting line is (3
D),
thereby obtaining the fractal dimension D of rock fragmen-
tation distribution.
Figure 19 exhibits the lg½MðxÞ=MðT Þ–lg x curve of the
fragmentation distribution of thermal cycling granite under
three cooling methods. The results reveal that under the
three different cooling methods, the slope of the curve grad-
ually decreases with the increase of the number of thermal
cycles, indicating that the fractal dimension D gradually
increases. The statistical results of fractal dimension D
are shown in Table 1. It can be seen from the table that Fig. 19. lg[M(x)/M(T)]–lgx curves of different thermal cycles: (a) natural
all correlation coefficients R are at a relatively high level, cooling, (b) water cooling, and (c) LN2 cooling.
 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861 859

illustrating that the fragmentation distribution of rock

under impact load conforms to the fractal law. Comparing
the fractal dimension with the macroscopic fragmentation
characteristics of the granite, it is found that the larger
the fractal dimension, the greater the number of rock frag-
ments and the smaller the size, resulting in the higher
degree of fragmentation and the better uniformity of frag-
mentation. The block fractal dimension of the granite used
in this experiment is mainly concentrated between 1.2 and
2.5.
The relationship between fractal dimension and average
fragment size is plotted in Fig. 20. The results show that the
fractal dimension D of fractured granite under the three
cooling methods gradually increases with the decrease of
average fragment size. With the different cooling treat-
ments, when the average fragment size of granite decreases
from 25.87 mm to 11.72, 4.28, and 7.95 mm, the fractal
dimension D increases from 1.24 to 2.25, 2.50, and 2.20, Fig. 20. Relationship between fractal dimension and average fragment
respectively. At the same time, it can be seen that the frac- size.
tal dimension is closely related to the fragmentation char-
acteristics of granite. The smaller the average fragment the propagation of cracks in the rock (Gao, Fan, & Wan,
size of granite, the higher the fragmentation degree and 2021; Rong et al., 2021). This leads to significant deteriora-
the larger the fractal dimension of granite, which is consis- tion of mechanical properties of rock (including dynamic
tent with the above conclusion obtained by observing the peak strength, elastic modulus, etc.). With the further
macro fragmentation characteristics of granite. increase of the thermal cycles, the propagation of microc-
racks provides sufficient deformation space for mineral
4.4 Mechanisms of circulating heating and cooling expansion, and the thermal stress generated by correspond-
ing mineral constraints decreases, resulting in the reduction
The XRD test results in the previous section show that of the degradation rate of mechanical properties of rocks
granite is mainly composed of quartz, feldspar, mica, and (Rong et al., 2021).
other minerals, which have different thermal expansion In addition, compared with the naturally cooled sample,
coefficients. After the first thermal cycle, the alternating when the sample is subjected to rapid cooling (water and
thermal stress caused by the uncoordinated thermal expan- LN2), the strong cold shock produces a considerable tem-
sion deformation produced by different minerals leads to perature gradient, resulting in a significant increase in ther-
mal stress (Rong et al., 2021). Therefore, it is observed that
the deterioration of mechanical properties caused by water
cooling and LN2 cooling is more severe than that caused by
Table 1 natural cooling. Moreover, due to the extremely low tem-
The value of Fractal dimension D and correlation coefficient R2.
perature of LN2 (
196 °C), the temperature difference
Cycle number Cooling methods Fractal Correlation between LN2 and high-temperature rock is more remark-
dimension D coefficient R2
able, resulting in more significant thermal stress caused
0 – 1.24 0.94 by LN2 cooling than water cooling. This is why LN2 cool-
1 Natural cooling 1.70 0.99 ing degrades the mechanical properties of rocks more sig-
Water cooling 2.26 0.98 nificantly than water cooling.
LN2 cooling 1.67 0.97
4 Natural cooling 2.04 0.97
Water cooling 2.27 0.99 5 Conclusions
LN2 cooling 2.16 0.98
8 Natural cooling 2.06 0.99 To investigate the dynamic behavior of granite under
Water cooling 2.44 0.96 different thermal/cooling cycles. SHPB tests were carried
LN2 cooling 2.29 0.93 out on granite undergoing 0, 1, 4, 8, 12, and 16 thermal
12 Natural cooling 2.28 0.99 cycles, and the impact fragments were sieved. The variation
Water cooling 2.40 0.95 rule of peak strength, peak strain, and Young’s modulus
LN2 cooling 2.31 0.96 were revealed. The impact damage factor was introduced,
16 Natural cooling 2.25 0.97 and the relationship between dynamic strength and damage
Water cooling 2.50 0.93 was discussed. The fragmentation characteristics of granite
LN2 cooling 2.20 0.98
were analyzed. The main conclusions are as follows:
860 L. Fan et al. / Underground Space 7 (2022) 847–861
(1) Under the three different thermal/cooling cycles, the
deterioration of the physical and mechanical proper-
ties of granite mainly occurs in the first thermal cycle,
specifically manifested in the decrease of peak
strength and Young’s modulus and the increase of
peak strain. Compared with the untreated samples,
the peak stress and Young’s modulus under the three
cooling methods decrease significantly by 8.23%,
10.69%, 14.84%, 41.73% and 52.05%. 52.44%, and
the peak strain sharply increases by 28.57%, 40.0%,
and 41.9% after the first thermal cycle. With the fur-
ther increase in thermal cycles, the deterioration
grows slowly and tends to stabilize. Due to the stron-
ger thermal shock on high-temperature granite
caused by LN2 cooling, the deterioration of the gran-
ite is the most significant, followed by water cooling,
and finally, natural cooling.
(2) The impact damage factor expressed based on
dynamic Young’s modulus indicates that the first ther-
mal cycle causes the most significant damage to gran-
ite under different cooling methods; as the number of
thermal cycles increases from 4 to 16, the variation
of impact damage factor is very slight. The dynamic
peak stress and impact damage factor show a linear
relationship under the three cooling methods. With
the increase of impact damage factor, the dynamic
peak stress decreases gradually. Furthermore, the
deterioration rate of dynamic peak stress with impact
damage factor of LN2-cooled samples is the fastest,
followed by water-cooled samples, and the deteriora-
tion rate of natural-cooled samples is the slowest.
(3) Under impact loading, the average fragment size of
the granite decreases with the increase of thermal
cycles, and the fragmentation degree of granite grad-
ually increases, changing from the axial splitting fail-
ure to a more complex composite failure mode. In
addition, the fractal dimension is closely related to
rock fragmentation characteristics. Comparing the
average fragment size, fractal dimension, and macro-
scopic fragmentation characteristics of granite, it is
found that under the three cooling methods, with
the increase of thermal cycles, the smaller the average
fragment size, the larger the fractal dimension D of
broken granite samples, the higher the fragmentation
degree, and the better the uniformity of fragmenta-
tion. Moreover, under the same number of thermal
cycles, the average fragment size of water-cooled
samples is the smallest, the fractal dimension is the
largest, and the fragmentation degree is the highest,
followed by LN2 cooling.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
This research was financially supported by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
12172019, and 52004013).
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