Investigation of mechanical properties of soft rock due to laboratory reproduction of physical weathering process

The results of this study show that artificial rocks (cement treated sand, CTS) can be used as a homogeneous material to simulate soft rock. In the stress-strain curves, the initial Young's modulus showed no significant change when increasing the confining pressure. The initial Young's modulus showed a nonlinear decrease when the weathering process cycle increased. When soft rocks suffer the weathering process at a certain confining pressure, the relationship between normalized shear strength and normalized shear wave velocity was linear. When soft rocks suffer the weathering process at different confining pressures, the normalized shear strength under a lower confining pressure dropped faster than when the confining pressure was higher.