The strenuous Leura weak sandstone

The Leura weak sandstone (LWSS), the highly weathered shallow parts of the Banks Wall Sandstone, is one of the dominating surface rocks in the Blue Mountains region in the Sydney Basin. While many infrastructure projects constructed in the Blue Mountains region involved very weak, highly friable LWSS, the mechanical properties of the rock are poorly understood. In this work, a detailed characterization of the rock is presented including sampling and sample preparation, grain size distribution, and results from scanning electron microscopy (SEM), permeability tests, uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) tests, triaxial compression tests, and erosion tests.