Cyclic thermal loading and triaxial strength test data from the Sidmouth Mudstone Formation

The accompanying dataset contains geomechanical strength data of mudstone samples collected from the Gunthorpe Member, of the Sidmouth Mudstone Formation of the Mercia Mudstone Group. The testing was completed at the British Geological Survey (BGS). All sample preparation, preservation and testing were completed to the specification outlined by the ISRM (ISRM, 1978b; ISRM, 1978a; Bieniawski and Bernede, 1979; ISRM, 1985 for determining the indirect tensile strength, triaxial strength, UCS and point load strength respectively) unless otherwise stated. Each test was comprised of three main stages: 1) A heating stage where the sample is heated to a set temperature loading scheme under pressure conditions of 1-1.4 MPa axial stress and 0.5 MPa confining pressure throughout the heating stage 2) A preloading stage, where the confining pressure is increased to 5 MPa which was held throughout the triaxial compression test. 3) Triaxial compression test, during the active deformation phase, the samples were axially loaded using a constant displacement rate of 0.0012 mm s-1. The data are separated into individual Microsoft Excel files, with each file representing a single test. Each file contains time, force, stress, displacement, and strain data.