Adsorptive Pore Pressures Of Argillaceous Rocks

The early work of Terzaghi1 showed that the true stress state of a rock can be expressed by the principle of effective stress. This principle states that effective stress is equal to total applied stress minus the pore pressure. Since the introduction of this principle, a great effort has been made to measure the pore pressure of rocks so that the true stress state can be determined. For clean, permeable sandstones, it is usually found that the effective stress principle can easily be applied. Direct measurement of the pore pressure is achieved with a hydraulic pressure device and the effective stress state thereby computed. However, for fine-grained rocks which contain large amounts of clay (referred to herein as shales), pore pressure measurements are usually quite difficult because of the adsorptive forces of the clay platelets, which produce negative internal pressures. No suitable device is known for measuring internal pressures of dry shales; the effective stress approach is therefore not feasible and data are usually presented in another form. As an example, data from compressive strength tests are presented as a function of rock wetness, rather than effective confining stress. The work of Belopoloskii2 and Colback and Wiid3 are examples of such data. It was pointed out by Lambe and Whitman4 that a better way must be found to express the effective stress of argillaceous rocks. The information presented herein is an attempt to fill that need. Various authors have been able to measure moderate negative pore pressures (0-240 psi) within rather wet, argillaceous rocks by means of various pore pressure devices. In 1961 Lambe5 resented information which shows that pore pressures in argillaceous rocks are indeed negative ; he presented values of suction pressure as low as - 14 psi. Likewise,