Lamina Influences on Tensile Strength of Shallow Marine Shales from Upper Ordovician, Western Ordos Basin

[Image: see text] To investigate the influence of the lamina effect on the tensile strength of shallow marine shales and improve the shortcomings of the existing Brazilian standard disc splitting method, the Lamina shale of the Upper Ordovician Wulalik Fm in the western margin of the Ordos Basin was selected as the experimental object. Based on the radial wave velocity anisotropy test, the direction of crustal stress was determined, and standard cores were drilled. The Brazilian standard disc splitting experiment on Lamina shale with different loading angles was designed and carried out. The influence of lamina on the tensile strength of shale was summarized, and an improved calculation method of tensile strength was proposed. The experimental results indicate that the presence of lamina makes the tensile strength of shallow marine shale exhibit significant anisotropy, and the fracture surface morphology of standard discs under different loading angles varies greatly. The overall failure characteristics can be classified into two types: linear and curved. When the loading angle is 0° or 90°, the fracture surface of the disc belongs to tensile failure (linear type), and the traditional splitting method has good applicability. When the loading angle is greater than 0° and less than 90°, the fracture surface of the disc belongs to tensile shear failure (curve type), and traditional splitting methods are not applicable. There is a difference in tensile strength between vertical and horizontal wells, and vertical wells should consider the comprehensive tensile strength of the rock matrix and lamina at a 90° loading angle. Horizontal wells should consider the tensile strength of the weak lamina plane with a loading angle of 0°. The improved Brazilian splitting method solves the problem of the traditional method, calculating lower tensile strength values when the loading angle is greater than 0° and less than 90°. This provides important basic data support for wellbore stability evaluation and reservoir stimulation transformation.