A New Ultrasound Method for Measuring the Physical and Mechanical Properties of Rocks

The determination of physical and mechanical properties of rocks such as attenuation coefficient, bulk density, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio in laboratory or in situ conditions is time consuming, tedious and requires special equipment and expertise. However, the use of new technologies based on the propagation of ultrasound waves is non-destructive and is relatively simple to implement. In addition, they are of great interest for improved analysis accuracy. The objective of this paper is to present a new ultrasound technique that uses water as the reference transmission medium. This enables the measurement of the longitudinal velocity, transversal velocity and attenuation coefficient of ultrasound waves in several rock types. The measurement of these parameters allows subsequently inferring the mechanical properties of each rock. Furthermore, good linear correlations were found between the velocity of the measured longitudinal wave and all of the determined mechanical properties.