A laboratory instrumental complex for studying the physics of the destruction of rocks

An up-to-date laboratory investigation complex for testing rock samples under controlled uniaxial and triaxial compression is designed. A wide range of loading modes of samples allows one to simulate various natural seismic regimes. The complex is equipped with systems intended for measuring and recording service and physical parameters, namely, axial, uniform, and pore pressure, axial and radial deformation, velocities of longitudinal waves along 16 travel paths, and waveforms of separate acoustic events, recorded by 16 sensors. The system ensures the continuous recording of the acoustic emission stream. Data of all measuring systems are synchronized with time. The rock samples are tested in the automatic mode, which can be optionally corrected during experiments. The experimental results are stored in a single database, which contains both raw and processed data (loading history, catalogs and bulletins of acoustic events, 3D graphic visualizations of pressure-wave velocity distributions in the sample volume, etc.). The application of the complex for the laboratory modeling of the seismic regime is illustrated by a number of practical examples.