Influences of freeze-thaw process on mechanical properties of some marbles

Marbles are industrial natural stones used for monuments, plating equipment, a final cover of buildings in and outside etc... Usage period of marbles exposed to natural weather conditions may get shortened because of a decrement of mechanical properties since water absorbed by marbles are frozen in the cold parts of seasons and this event stresses pores to initiate micro fissures and cracks in marbles. Then ice in it melts in hot seasons. This phenomenon is repeated every year. Due to this fact, a drop on mass and mechanical properties of marbles may be experienced and it follows with a fracture and fragmentation resulting by out of usage and renovation. In this study, mechanical properties of marbles such as uniaxial compressive strength, indirect tensile strength, Böhme abrasion resistance, fracture toughness, and point load, are examined for five different marbles after and before freeze and thaw cycles. Schmidt hammer rebound values are also determined. From literature, the number of samples is increased to 18 for uniaxial compressive strength test. According to the results, between values after and before freeze and thaw process, high correlation with uniaxial compressive strength, indirect tensile strength and Böhme abrasion resistance, a correlation in moderate with point load strength, fracture toughness strength are found out. This helps practitioners first to predict the aforementioned properties after freeze & thaw which is hard to perform and a time consumer process and second to design more realistic project plan when a marble subjected to bad weather conditions is used.