Abstract: The porous reef limestone has a unique structure with a biological growth line skeleton, but there has been no related research on its strength and size relationship. Based on the three-dimensional CT scan results of reef limestone, the pore characteristics of reef limestone were digitized, and different-sized numerical analysis models of the porous reef limestone were established to study the relationship between the uniaxial compressive strength of porous reef limestone and its size. The reconstructed reef limestone samples were cubic blocks with sizes of 4cm, 8cm, 10cm, 12cm, and 14cm, and were subjected to uniaxial compression tests that parallel and perpendicular to the reef limestone growth direction, respectively. The results show that there is no obvious scale effect on the uniaxial compressive strength in the parallel and perpendicular to the reef limestone growth line directions, and the failure characteristics are manifested as local plastic deformation of the biological skeleton, which evolves into macroscopic ductile deformation of the structure.

Key words: Reef Limestone, Scale Effect, Uniaxial Compression, Numerical Reconstruction