Reflections on measurement of residual stress in rock

Consideration of the behaviour of elastic bodies shows that it is not possible for a set of overcoring measurements that are made within isolated blocks to show residual strains or stresses that have a non-zero average, unless the size of the equilibrium volume over which the residual stresses balance is both considerably larger than the volume of the overcore and smaller than the size of the isolated block. Since some results have been reported that do not match these constraints, non-elastic behaviour must have occurred during overcoring. A possible explanation, is that oriented microcracks are somehow opened by the overcoring. In some cases, stress fields induced by microcracking near the overcoring cut may explain measured strain changes far from the cut. Consideration of various reported measurements in terms of relative sizes of overcoring and equilibrium volumes shows that care is necessary when interpreting residual stress measurements.