Performance of Core Strangle Test (CST) on Porous Rocks

Abstract

The Core Strangle Test (CST) has been proposed in 2009 by author as an index test permitting indirect estimation of the Uniaxial Compressive Strength. In this test, load is applied through a circle perpendicular to the core axis as a strangle. The mentioned advantage of the experiment is the possibility of testing quite short rock cores on which the UCS experiment cannot be performed. In the original paper published at 2009, the author performed several experiments on non-porous rocks on which the UCS has also been measured. The results showed a linear correlation between the UCS and the CST index permitting an indirect evaluation of the UCS by performing CST experiments. The current paper is quite similar to the original paper with the difference that the experiments are performed here on porous rocks of various porosity. CST and UCS of the rocks are shown to have both exponential correlations with the rock porosity. Once again a linear relation, quite close to the one in the original paper, is obtained for the UCS of the porous rocks as a function of the CST index. This study confirms that the CST experiment can also be used for porous rocks. Studying the feasibility of CST method on porous rocks seems to be a logical next step in the development of this experiment and the results clearly support it.