Mechanical Properties and Energy Dissipation of Sandstone under Cyclic Loading-Unloading

For the bearing rock in geotechnical engineering, it is frequently affected by external loads. This paper adopted different upper limits of stress to carry out cyclic loading-unloading on the sandstone specimens to make them in different damage degrees and analyzed the mechanical mechanism of the damaged sandstone under different stresses. Then, the strength change and energy evolution of sandstone with different damage degrees were analyzed, and the damage of the loaded sandstone was quantitatively characterized. The experimental results showed that the strength and plastic deformation of sandstone after cyclic loading-unloading with different upper-stress limits gradually decreased with the increase of the upper-stress limit. In the loading-unloading stages of cyclic loading-unloading, the elastic modulus increased with the increase of the upper-stress limit. In general, as the number of cycles increased, the total strain energy density and elastic deformation energy density gradually increased, and as the upper-stress limit increased, both of them also increased. The damage factor of sandstone after cyclic loading-unloading, which was characterized by dissipated energy, increased in an S-shape with the increase of the upper-stress limit, and the growth rate first increased and then decreased.