Experimental Study on Influence of Intermediate Principal Stress on the Permeability of Sandstone

In engineering, it is considerably important to understand the evolution process of sandstone deformation and permeability under complex stress conditions. Although numerous scholars have reported on sandstone permeability, many of their studies are only based on uniaxial or conventional triaxial stress conditions. In practical engineering, in situ stress evidently indicates three-dimensional anisotropy. In recent years, many scholars have performed experimental studies on rock permeability under true triaxial stress. There are, however, few investigations related to the influence of intermediate principal stress and intermediate principal stress coefficient on sandstone permeability; moreover, the mechanism is unclear. In this study, the permeability of sandstone under true triaxial stress conditions is measured using a true triaxial apparatus. The results show that the intermediate principal stress has significant effects on permeability and deformation of sandstone sample. Under different principal stress conditions, the permeability is observed to decrease with the increase of the principal stress. With increasing intermediate principal stress coefficient b (from 0 to 1), the major principal strain and the minor principal strain always compressed and finally decreased by 27.31 and 36.96%, while the intermediate principal strain finally changes from expansion to compression (from − 0.045 to 0.255%). Also the normalized permeability loss increased from 9.57 to 16.59%. In addition, by fitting the experimental data with several permeability models, it was found that a true triaxial permeability model can well describe the changes in sandstone permeability. Based on the fitting parameters, the influence of intermediate principal stress and its coefficient on the stress sensitivity of sandstone was analyzed.