• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.225-236
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• 2000

We conducted laboratory simulations of deep vertical drilling into the earth's crust to induce borehole breakouts and investigated their potential use for estimating in situ stress magnitudes in Westerly granite and Berea sandstone. Our experiments consisted of two major stages, a series of triaxial tests and borehole-breakout formation tests under a wide range of far-field stresses. We derived the Mohr-Coulomb, Nadai and Mogi failure criteria from the triaxial test results. Each criterion was compared with the stress condition at breakout boundaries. We concluded that the well known Mohr-Coulomb criterion is not compatible with the stress condition at breakout failure. On the other hand, polyaxial (truly triaxial) failure criteria such as the Nadai criterion for Berea sandstone and the Mogi criterion for Westerly granite were much more suitable for predicting breakout failure zone. Such failure criteria appeared to enable the reliable estimation of the magnitude of one of two horizontal principal stresses if the other one is known.