Geotechnical Engineering Online Library

For brittle materials, the tensile strength plays an important role in mechanical analyses and engineering applications. Although quasi-static direct and dynamic indirect tensile strength testing methods have already been developed for rocks, the dynamic direct pull test is still necessary to accurately determine the tensile strength of rocks. In this paper, a Kolsky tension bar system is developed for measuring the dynamic direct tensile strength of rocks. A dumbbell-shaped sample is adopted and attached to the bars using epoxy glue. The pulse shaping technique is utilized to eliminate the inertial effect of samples during test. The single pulse loading technique is developed for the effective microstructure analyses of tested samples. Two absorption devices are successfully utilized to reduce the reflection of waves in the incident bar and transmitted bar, respectively. Laurentian granite (LG) is tested to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. The tensile strength of LG increases with the loading rate. Furthermore, the nominal surface energy of LG is measured, which also increases with the loading rate.