Effect of thermal damage on capturing fracture signal of high temperature sandstone subjected to cooling shock from the coal fire control project

In the coal fire control project, the multiple water injections used to extinguish coal fires and the coal fires that reignite can cause many forms of ground collapse to occur, threatening project safety. Therefore, studying the thermal damage and capturing disaster signals of sandstone, a main weight bearer in coal measure strata, exposed to heating-cooling, cycles is critical to ensure the engineering safety. In this work, the coal-measure sandstones from Urumqi, Xinjiang and Yulin, Shaanxi, China, were collected. For the sandstones from Urumqi, China (Type A sandstone), the samples were first heated to 800 °C, and cooled using water, heated to a setting temperature (100 °C, 200 °C, 300 °C, 400 °C, 500 °C, 600 °C, 700 °C and 800 °C), and cooled using water again. The ultrasonic p-wave velocity, density and water absorption of the sandstones were tested. Uniaxial compression tests and shear tests were conducted on the sandstones. The thermal damage in sandstones were analysed using rock energy theory. For the sandstones from Yulin, China (Type B sandstone), the X-ray diffraction test, scanning electron microscope test and uniaxial compression experiment with AE monitoring were carried out for the raw sandstone and the sandstone exposed to 800 °C and water cooling twice (cooling shock sandstone), respectively. The results show that, for the type A sandstone, compared with the mechanical strength of the sandstone at room temperature, the mechanical strength of the sandstone exposed to 800 °C for the first time is decreased by less than 20%. When the sandstone is exposed to high temperature again, the critical threshold temperature is 400 °C. When the temperature exceeds 400 °C, the thermal damage aggravated again and the mechanical strength rapidly degraded. For the type B sandstone, the results showed that the crack density and volume of cooling shock sandstone increased by 8.79% and 2.69%, respectively, and p-wave velocity decreased by 51.83%, compared with those of the raw sandstone. The mechanical strength of cooling shock sandstone decreased, including a 50.68% reduction in elastic modulus. The AE attenuation coefficient α=(1-E_c/E₀) /k_c, related to the elastic modulus and the crack change rate, was derived, which providing an approach to count the attenuation of AE signal caused by thermal damage for cooling shock sandstone. Increasing the preamplifier amplification factor is feasible to improve the accuracy for monitoring the fracture of cooling shock sandstone in coal-fire control project.