Preliminary experiments towards understanding the influence of fractures on the anisotropy of electrical conductivity

Abstract Fracture induced anisotropy was investigated using synthetic samples constructed from glass beads and epoxy. Use of synthetic samples gave some control over the background (or non-crack porosity) while allowing inclusion of an oriented embedded crack. As expected, it was found that the anisotropic ratio (ratio of most conductive direction to least conductive) was directly proportional to the fracture porosity and inversely proportional to the background porosity with the anisotropy of the samples used being quite small (2% - 10%).