Rock Characterisation, Modelling and Engineering Design Methods – Feng, Hudson & Tan (Eds)

© 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-00057-5

Experimental study on creep behavior of sandstone with pore water

pressure and its constitutive modeling

Y.J. Cao, W. Wang, J. Lü, T.G. Liu & Z. Zheng

Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education for Geomechanics and Embankment Engineering, Hohai University,
Nanjing, China
Geotechnical Research Institute, Hohai University, Nanjing, China

ABSTRACT: An experimental study is conducted on sandstone under different confining and pore pressures
through triaxial creep tests The creep properties of sandstone under different conditions are compared and
analyzed The test results show that: in the case of same confining pressure, pore pressure can increase the
instantaneous elastic deformation and creep deformation but reduce the strength of sandstone. Furthermore,
confining pressure has an impact on creep deformation while maintaining a constant pore pressure. Based on
the classical creep model and the application of effective stress theory, a new nonlinear viscoelasto-plastic
rheological model for sandstone is established, which can reflect the effect of pore pressure on creep properties
and induced damage in the process of creep. The comparison between the results obtained from the modeling and
those from the experiments shows that this model can describe well primary attenuation creep, steady creep and
accelerated creep, and a good accord is obtained.

1 INTRODUCTION a rock-fluid interaction resulting in a negative influ-

Rheology is the inherent nature of rock material; espe-
cially most of the engineering rock masses are in
the generalized rheological deformation (Wang & Li
2008). Engineering practices show that rock defor-
mation increases with time under a long-termed load
leading to cracks or even failure on structures. Jun
(2007) has systematically summarized the progress
in rheological mechanics and its engineering applica-
tion in recent years. However, most of these researches
focused on the effect of stress field on the rheological
properties. In fact, the mechanical properties become
more and more complicated with the diversification
of structure form and the expansion of construction
scale in rock engineering. At the same time, engi-
neering activities, geological effect and the change
of environment have a direct or indirect effect on the
long-term stability of rock engineering. Experiments
and engineering researches have shown that water has
important effect on rock rheological properties.
Recently, a large number of experimental results
reported in the literature were obtained from the tests
carried out under different water contents. (Li & Zhu
et al. 2003, Zhu & Ye 2002, Yang & Xu et al. 2006).
As have been pointed out by these experiments, rock
creep properties with certain water content are more
significant than those in air-dry state, and tend to
reduce the strength of rock through the physical and
chemical effects. Actually, the properties of rock mass
in engineering such as tunnels and underground oil
storage are not only affected by the surrounding rock
stress, but also related to pore pressure which allows
ence on the long-term stabilities of engineering. How-
ever, the coupled effect of creep and pore pressure is
rarely considered for studying the rheological proper-
ties of rock.Yan et al. (2010) compared the rheological
properties of porous limestone through triaxial creep
experiment conducted under different water pressures
and deviatoric stresses. She et al. (2010) designed three
types of load modes in which a high pore pressure
is applied to study the influence of pore pressure on
creep properties of marble. However, few experimen-
tal studies on rock creep are carried out under different
confining pressures and pore pressures.
In this study, we investigated the water-weakening
effect on the rheological properties of rock as a func-
tion of both confining pressure and pore pressure by
comparing the experimental data with those obtained
from the tests without pore pressure. Furthermore, a
new nonlinear viscoelasto-plastic rheological model
based on the concept of effective stress is presented
in order to describe the effect of pore water pressure
on porous rock and the damage caused by water in
the process of rock creep. Experiments results will be
compared with the results predicted by the new model
introduced in this study.
2 EXPERIMENTAL STUDY AND RESULTS
2.1 Tested material and equipment
This study is performed on sandstone taken from
a hydropower dam foundation, and the material is

137

Figure 1. Samples of sandstone.
Figure 2. Rock servo-controlled triaxial rheology system
developed by Laboratory of Mechanics in Lille in France,
University of Sciences and Technology of Lille in France and
Hohai University in China.
a relatively homogeneous quartz-sandstone which is
considered as an isotropic rock. The density of sand-
stone is 2200 kg/m3 with an average porosity of
17.34%. Thus it has a good permeability. The sand-
stone was cored from the situ rock mass and re-
machined along the direction of stratification in the
laboratory. All tested samples were cylindrical with a
length of 100 mm and a diameter of 50 mm (Fig. 1).
Creep tests were conducted on the equipment
named Rock servo-controlled triaxial rheological sys-
tem (RCT) developed by Laboratory of Mechanics
in Lille (LML, CNRS), University of Sciences and
Technology of Lille in France and Hohai University in
China. The equipment is made up of loading system,
constant-stability pressure equipment, hydraulic pres-
sure transfer system, pressure chamber equipment,
water pressure system and automatic data collec-
tion system (Fig. 2). And test data can be collected
automatically.
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2.2 Experimental methodology
Prior to performing creep tests, the rock specimens
were saturated. A series of conventional triaxial com-
pression tests for saturated sandstone samples were
carried out to determine the short-term strength and
deformation behavior under different confining pres-
sures (σ3 = 2 MPa and 6 MPa) and pore pressures
(p = 0 MPa, and 0.5 MPa). After, a series of multiple-
step triaxial creep tests were performed under the same
stress (σ3 and p) conditions at a constant temperature
and humidity so that we can investigated the coupled
effect of confining and pore pressures on creep prop-
erties of sandstone. The creep experiment procedures
were described as follows:
1. The saturated sample in the test chamber with two
linear variable displacement transducer sensors was
installed.
2. When the sample was installed, confining pressure
was increased to a predefined value and then kept
constant for about 24 hours.
3. After that, pore pressure was applied to a prede-
fined pressure, then deviatoric stress was applied
at a rate of 0.1 cm3 /min in a stepwise manner to a
predefined pressure. When the rock samples were
loaded to the first stress level, the axial devia-
toric stress was kept constant for 48 hours while
recording the deformation of rock samples, the con-
fining pressure and stress as functions of time by
an automatic data collection system.
4. After the first stress level for the creep test, the rock
samples were gradually tested under the second,
third. . . . according to previous method until the
accelerated creep damage occurred at the last stress.
2.3 Experimental results and analysis
Typical triaxial experimental creep results of sandstone
are shown in Fig. 3. In this section, variation of axial
strains in the samples under various stress levels is
analyzed as function of time.
As shown in Fig. 3, when σ3 = 2 MPa and p =
0 MPa, the experiment was conducted at different
stress levels: 11.4 MPa, 15.2 MPa and 19 MPa, result-
ing in instantaneous elastic deformation of 3.8 µε,
0.83 µε and 0.87 µε. The data shows that the instan-
taneous elastic deformation depended strongly and
nonlinearly on deviatoric stress, and the deformation
increased with the increase of stress. Further, when the
pore pressure reached to 0.5 MPa, the elastic defor-
mation in the primary creep phase was much higher
than the deformation performed without the pore pres-
sure under the same confining pressure (σ3 = 2 MPa).
It was clear to notice that pore pressure has an obvi-
ous effect on the instantaneous elastic deformation and
can reduce the elastic modulus of sandstone. More-
over, creep experiments were conducted at a fixed
confining pressure of 2 MPa, but with deviatoric stress
of 11.4 MPa and 15.2 MPa. The corresponding creep
deformation conducted by the tests at a p of 0.5 MPa is
158% and 183% more than that at a p of 0 MPa. This
suggests that the existence of the pore water pressure

Figure 3. Axial strain-time relation curves under differ-
ent confining pressures and pore pressures at various stress
levels.
increases the axial strain of sandstone. It is because
that water molecules get into the specimen and weaken
the links between the rock grains and the phenomenon
of compaction softening tends to occur. On the other
hand, water molecules play a role in dissolving the min-
eral grains and reducing the friction coefficient, which
is regarded as a potential source of strength reduction
in sandstones where a friction reduction of about 10
percent has been derived by comparing experimen-
tal strength data and results from a micromechanical
model (Baud et al. 2000). When maintaining a constant
pore pressure of 0.5 MPa, the primary elastic deforma-
tion of the sandstone at a σ3 of 6 MPa were 52% lower
than that at a σ3 of 2 MPa at the same stress level. In
addition, the higher confining pressure is, the smaller
corresponding creep deformation is. So we can con-
clude that confining pressure has a negative effect on
creep deformation at the same stress level.
3 RHEOLOGICAL MODEL STUDY
From the strain-time curves shown in Fig. 3, it can be
seen that the axial strains under the failure deviatoric
stress level undergo three stages: attenuation creep,
steady-state creep and accelerated creep. In order to
model the creep behavior of rocks, a lot of creep mod-
els have been proposed (Cao et al. 2002, Xu & Yang
2006 and She et al. 2009). These models can enrich
rheological theories of rock to some extent while they
are difficult to describe the rheological behavior of
porous media subjected to pore water pressure. Fur-
thermore, the induced damage during the process of
creep cannot be taken into account. In this part, consid-
ering the mechanism of pore deformation, we propose
a new nonlinear creep model based on the conventional
Nishihara model and the application of effective stress.
3.1 The double effective stress
Rheology of porous media is a very complicated pro-
cess. For the creep behavior of viscoelastic materials,
139
Figure 4. Primary deformation and structural deformation
of porous media.
the concept of effective stress can be used to consider
the influence of pore water pressure on creep deforma-
tion. The sandstone can roughly be considered as an
assembly of solid grains with different kinds of con-
tact surfaces and a connected macroscopic porosity.
According to the study of Li & Kong et al. (1999), there
are two kinds of deformation mechanism occurred
in porous media: firstly, the overall deformation is
only caused by the deformation of framework grains,
known as the primary deformation (Fig. 4a); Secondly,
the overall deformation is generated by the change of
spatial structure in the particles of medium skeleton
such as the relative displacement produced between
skeletal particles, known as the structural deformation
(Fig. 4b).
Porous media will produce instantaneous recov-
erable elastic-strain response (primary deformation
and viscous strain response (structural deformation)
derived from the adjustment of relative displacement
under the action of external force. At this moment,
porous medium is considered as a dual medium body,
and its deformation mechanism presents the couple
effect of primary deformation and structural deforma-
tion as the characteristics of double effective stress. As
reported by Li & Kong (1999), the primary effective
stress and structural effective stress can be calculated
by the following formula:
1) The primary effective stress,
p
where σeff defines as the primary effective stress;
φ is the porosity; p is pore pressure. The primary
effective stress depends on the elastic strain of
media.
2) The structural effective stress,
s
where σeff represents the structural effective stress;
φc is connected porosity involved with cement-
ing properties of porous media. And the structural
effective stress determines the rate of viscous strain.
A pressurized pore fluid acts to reduce the applied
normal stresses and thus allows the lower effective
stresses undertaken by internal skeleton. It can be
studied from the previous analysis of double effective
stress which is able to take the water-weaken effect
Figure 5. Damage deformation of porous media.

into account during the creep course of sandstone.

Elastic modulus and peak strength will be weakened
by the behavior of damage due to the fact that the
known effects of water on rheological behavior of
rocks are usually decomposed into physical effects of
pore water pressure and chemical effects (Paterson &
Wong 2005). In case of mechanical damage, there are
a lot of tensile microscopic cracks, the “wedge” effect
caused by the pore water pressure will lead to water
access into the progressive crack tips due to damage,
and in this way the development and propagation of
cracks are improved. Therefore, tertiary creep (accel-
erating strain as failure is approached) corresponds to
an increase in crack growth rate due to crack interac-
tions. In case of chemical effects, chemical reaction
with water and hydrophilic minerals will attack crys-
talline matrix of sandstone resulting in the damage
of microstructure. From the above, this behavior of
damage can be expressed as grain rupturing and crack
propagating (Fig. 5). In view of porous media this
behavior can be described by the damage porosity.
Based on the study of Hai et al. (2010), the damage
effective stresses can be expressed as follows: Figure 6. Typical creep curve of sandstone.

Figure 7. The modified Nishihara model.

b generalized Kelvin component is useful to describe

where σeff represents the damage effective stress; φ is
the original porosity and φb is the damage porosity, h
is defined as a parameter reflecting crack closure. If
σ > 0, we have h = 1; if σ < 0, we have 0 ≤ h < 1. D is
the damage variable between 0 and 1. The parameter εb
controls the plastic strain caused by damage depending
on the damaging effective stress.
3.2 Formation of the constitutive model
Fig. 6 is a typical creep curve of sandstone revealing
an obvious three-stage creep. The primary creep stage
AB is characterized by a rapidly attenuated creep strain
rate to reach a steady creep stage BC, then the ter-
tiary creep stage CD is characterized by an accelerated
strain for a period of time until failure of rock.
By considering the deformation mechanism of
rock, a Hook elastic component can be introduced
to describe the primary deformation of rocks, and a
the structural deformation of rocks. But the classical
Nishihara model is difficult to describe the acceler-
ated creep of rocks. Therefore, a nonlinear viscoplastic
component can be introduced to describe the strain rate
change of accelerated creep. The viscoplastic compo-
nent only works as the accelerated creep happens. The
strain-time relation under constant stress is expressed
by Eq. 9. The modified Nishihara model is illustrated
in Fig. 7.
where σ is the stress, σs is the long-term strength. A
and η3 are the material coefficients, tc is the starting
time of accelerated creep, ch(t) is the hyperbolic cosine
function.

140
 During the accelerated creep, damage deforma-
tion caused by water-rock interaction accumulates
rapidly. According to M.L. Kachanov (1986), damage
evolution law can be defined as:

In the formula, α and r are the material coefficients;

t is creep time; tc is the starting time of accelerating
creep. In this case, only the damage deformation in the
accelerated creep stage is considered. Therefore dam-
age deformation is zero before the accelerated stage.
Taking into account the influence of pore pressure and
damage, by use of equation (6) together with substitu-
tion of equation (9) into equation (5), the final effective
stress can be expressed in the form:

According to the previous analysis, the total creep

strain can be written by:

The strain εe , εve and εb are determined respectively

by corresponding effective stress. Only the primary
and structural deformation occurs during the primary
and steady creep stages. It is assumed that a negligible
porosity caused by the primary and structural deforma-
tion varies a little due to the close-grained structure.
However, the damage porosity varies a lot when the
accelerated creep occurred because of progressive
damage caused by the water-weaken effect. The for-
mula (6) and (9) can reflect this change. Besides,
elastic modulus and viscosity coefficient vary with the
pore pressure and porosity (Wei et al., 2011), that is:

The constitutive relationship of the modified

Nishihara model is deduced as follows:

Figure 8. Comparison between results of modified damage

Nishihara model and experimental results.

creep phase occurs, the creep curve will be divided

3.3 Parameter identification and verification
According to the study, when the stress level is less than
the long-term strength, the accelerated creep phase
will never occur, so the modified Nishihara model
will degenerate into the generalized Kelvin model. The
formula (10) when t < tc can be applied directly. The
fitting result is given in Fig. 8(a). When the accelerated
into two parts based on the starting time of acceler-
ated creep. The first part (t < tc ) is the curve before
the accelerated creep stage; and the second part is the
one (t ≥ tc ) that the rock steps into its accelerated creep
stage. First, we can use the data when t < tc to fit the
material parameters E0 , E1 , E2 , η1 and η2 which con-
trol the attenuating and steady creep. Then the values
for E0 , E1 , E2 , η1 and η2 are fixed, and the data (when
t ≥ tc ) will be used to fit the parameters A, r, α and

141
Table 1. Parameters of modified damage Nishihara model.

σ1 –σ3 σ3 ρ E0 E1 E2 η1 η2 η3
/MPa /MPa /MPa /GPa /GPa /GPa /GP · h /GP · h /GP · h A α r

11.4 2 0 2.91 74.25 68.34 1216.8 307.8 – – – –

11.4 2 0.5 2.35 70 50 1229.5 1040.5 – – – –
11.4 6 0.5 4.72 74.41 129.3 749 31.49 – – – –
19 2 0.5 2.29 184 5.6 5.4 4.4 24.4 0.0058 12 49
33.6 6 0.5 3.94 188.5 5.4 1.43 50 113 0.0014 1.2 25.24

η3 which control the accelerated creep. All the param-
eters will be identified from the fitting results shown
in Fig. 8(b) and Fig.8(c), and the Tab. 1 presents the
values of parameters. It is noted that the elastic param-
eters E0 , E1 , E2 decrease with pore pressure under
the same stress. The simulation results by using the
modified Nishihara model agrees well with the test
results. The proposed model can show the influence of
pore pressure on rock creep deformation and describe
accurately the accelerated creep.
4 CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the results of triaxial creep tests on sand-
stone are presented in order to investigate the creep
behavior and its sensitivity to pore pressure as well
as confining pressure and deviatoric stress. The anal-
ysis show that the existence of the creep deformation
of sandstone increases with pore water pressure while
limited by a high confining pressure. It is also shown in
the proposed model that the damage caused by water-
weaken effect has influence on the creep deformation.
The comparison between the results obtained from the
modeling and the experiments shows that this model
can well describe the primary attenuation creep, the
steady creep and the accelerated creep.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work was supported by the National Sci-
ence Foundation of China (Grant no. 51109069,
11272114, 11172090) and National Program on Key
Basic Research Project (973 Program) (Grant no.
2011CB013504).
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