Investigation of the mechanical behaviour of brine saturated brown coal under uni-axial compression

Abstract

Coal seams are typically saturated with brine with varying NaCl concentrations and can be subjected to irreversible formation damage due to a number of physical and chemical interactions. Understanding the mechanical behaviour of a brine-saturated coal mass is thus important, when conducting operations on coal seams such as ones in-cooperated with hydraulic fracturing and CO2 sequestration projects. This paper investigates the mechanical behaviour of brown coal, saturated with varying NaCl concentration (i.e. 0%, 10% and 20% NaCl by weight) and subjected to monocyclic uni-axial compression. The coal volumetric strain, evaluated from ARAMIS photogrammetric analysis shows that the samples satu..