Abstract: A systematic process for obtaining the proportion of the rock-like material with properties of deformation and brittleness similar to the prototype sandstone using orthogonal test has been proposed. The indexes of and have been introduced to quantitatively represent the properties of deformation and brittleness, respectively. The rock-like material is composed with cement and microsilica as the binder material and quartz sand as the aggregate. First, orthogonal tests have been performed, and the various indexes of and with different levels of water-binder, sand-binder and microsilica-cement ratio have been divided by statistical data of natural sandstone. Second, range analysis has been applied to describe the trend of the two indexes with different levels of these three factors. Third, multivariate polynomial equations have been used to obtain the proper proportion of the rock-like material with properties of deformation and brittleness similar to the prototype sandstone. The specimens with the determined proportion are found to be within the allowable error margin compared with the prototype sandstone, and properties of deformation and brittleness of the proposed rock-like material are consistent with the sandstone. Therefore, the newly proposed rock-like material can substitute rock blocks in the following laboratory test.

Key words: rock-like material, orthogonal design, deformation properties, brittleness