Effect of water content on the mechanical behavior and energy evolution of soft rock under uniaxial compression

To investigate the influence of water content on the mechanical behavior and the energy evolution law of soft rocks, uniaxial compression tests were carried out on soft rock samples prepared from rock-like materials with different water contents.The test results suggest that under uniaxial compression conditions, as the water content of the soft rock samples increases, the failure pattern is single axial splitting failure (ASF), axial splitting local expansion mixed failure and single local expansion failure (LEF), respectively.The uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) exhibits an exponential decrease, while the elastic modulus displays a linear decline.Additionally, the axial peak strain initially declines and then increases.The total and elastic energies increase exponentially, whereas the dissipated energy decreases linearly.Elastic energy as a percentage of total energy decreases, while dissipated energy as a percentage of total energy increases.