Strength and deformation properties of volcanic rocks in Iceland

• Main Authors: Foged, Niels Nielsen, Andreassen, Katrine Alling
• Format: Other Non-Article Part of Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Volcanic rocks; Iceland; UCS test; Brazilian test; Elasticity modulus
• Online Access: https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/b05de4ef-791e-40b8-bdfb-2dac589ef482; https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/131105519/ngm2016_article_Abstr_no_137revised.pdf

Tunnelling work and preinvestigations for road traces require knowledge of the strength and de-formation properties of the rock material involved. This paper presents results related to tunnel-ling for Icelandic water power plants and road tunnels from a number of regions in Iceland. The volcanic rock from Iceland has been the topic for rock mechanical studies carried out by Ice-landic guest students at the Department of Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Den-mark over a number of years in cooperation with University of Iceland, Vegagerðin (The Icelandic Road Directorate) and Landsvirkjun (The National Power Company of Iceland). These projects involve engineering geological properties of volcanic rock in Iceland, rock mechanical testing and parameter evaluation. Upscaling to rock mass properties and modelling using Q- or GSI-methods have been studied by the students and are available in their MSc-theses, but will not be covered here. The present contribution gives a short engineering geological overview of the volcanic rock for-mations in Iceland. Furthermore, the results of a number of unconfined, Brazilian, and a limited number of triaxial compression tests are presented and evaluated. The results are grouped accord-ing to engineering geological classification and classification properties such as bulk density. Correlations between the bulk density and the logarithm to the elasticity modulus and strength parameters are established and discussed.