Serpentinite from Moeche (Galicia, North Western Spain). A Stone Used for Centuries in the Construction of the Architectural Heritage of the Region

Abstract

Serpentinites are characterized by highly variable mineralogical, physical, and mechanical properties. Serpentinites from Moeche (North Western Spain) have been studied to establish their mineralogical, petrographic, and textural characteristics, as well as their physical and mechanical parameters and the factors influencing rock failure, to evaluate the possible use of these rocks either for new construction or for conservation-restoration of the architectonic heritage of the region. In this paper, we highlight the importance of a detailed mineralogical and petrographic characterization in the fracture zones, which will determine the viability of quarrying the stone. A strong correlation between the petrographic features and the uniaxial compression strength values has been observed. The most important aspects were found to be the rock texture, the mineralogical composition of the fracture area and foliation, although mineralogy was also found to be involved (% of carbonates) in the strength of the stone. An important preliminary result of the study was the low asbestos content of these serpentinites, which will help in the potential re-opening of the quarries.

Analysis of Effects of Rock Physical Properties Changes from Freeze-Thaw Weathering in Ny-Ålesund Region: Part 1—Experimental Study

“…In this study, as mentioned previously, a clear decrease of shore hardness with increasing number of freeze-thaw cycle could not found due to the inherent uncertainty of shore hardness. The high uncertainty in assessing rock shore hardness was also emphasized in the previous research [12,43].…”

Lithological Control on the Estimation of Uniaxial Compressive Strength by the P-Wave Velocity Using Supervised and Unsupervised Learning

“…Awang et al ( 2016 ) also proposed a correlation between UCS and V P for shale rocks of Malaysia. Nespereira et al ( 2019 ) used serpentinite rocks of NW Spain to propose a linear regression to predict the UCS from V P . Teymen and Menguc ( 2020 ) used 93 samples of different rock types and suggested a common regression equation.…”

Analysis of Effects of Rock Physical Properties Changes from Freeze–Thaw Weathering in Ny-Ålesund Region: Part 2—Correlations and Prediction of Weathered Properties

“…There are studies [53][54][55] showing clear trends of strength drop with increasing freeze-thaw actions. However, relatively fresh rocks having UCS higher than 200 MPa do not show significant UCS decrease with increasing number of freeze-thaw cycle [56,57]. There is a limitation on model development for estimation of one physical property of relatively fresh rock from other properties of the rock due to relatively low correlations among the physical properties.…”