ABSTRACT
Rock salt is considered to be an isotropic material. However, flat-bedded rock salt shows a layering that has sedimentary origin, which may influence the mechanical behavior of the rock. To estimate the impact of the structural anisotropy on the mechanical behavior, a series of triaxial compression experiments on two facies of rock salt originating from the mine “Borth” in Rheinberg (South-Western Central European Basin, North-Western Germany) were performed by the Institute for Geomechanics and Geotechnics of Technische Universität Braunschweig. Test specimens were prepared with layering horizontal and vertical to the axial loading direction. The results show, that the peak stress values lie in a comparable range in both test series. However, the peak stress occurs at a higher strain during low confining pressure tests on horizontally layered samples. The paper presents the results of the performed tests and argues that, based on these results, an anisotropic mechanical behavior can be assumed with respect to the failure strain.
