Tensile Strength of Geological Discontinuities Including Incipient Bedding, Rock Joints and Mineral Veins

Geological discontinuities have a controlling influence for many rock-engineering projects in terms of strength, deformability and permeability, but their characterisation is often very difficult. Whilst discontinuities are often modelled as lacking any strength, in many rock masses visible rock discontinuities are only incipient and have tensile strength that may approach and can even exceed that of the parent rock. This fact is of high importance for realistic rock mass characterisation but is generally ignored. It is argued that current ISRM and other standards for rock mass characterisation, as well as rock mass classification schemes such as RMR and Q, do not allow adequately for the incipient nature of many rock fractures or their geological variability and need to be revised, at least conceptually. This paper addresses the issue of the tensile strength of incipient discontinuities in rock and presents results from a laboratory test programme to quantify this parameter. Rock samples containing visible, natural incipient discontinuities including joints, bedding, and mineral veins have been tested in direct tension. It has been confirmed that such discontinuities can have high tensile strength, approaching that of the parent rock. Others are, of course, far weaker. The tested geological discontinuities all exhibited brittle failure at axial strain less than 0.5 % under direct tension conditions. Three factors contributing to the tensile strength of incipient rock discontinuities have been investigated and characterised. A distinction is made between sections of discontinuity that are only partially developed, sections of discontinuity that have been locally weathered leaving localised residual rock bridges and sections that have been ‘healed’ through secondary cementation. Tests on bedding surfaces within sandstone showed that tensile strength of adjacent incipient bedding can vary considerably. In this particular series of tests, values of tensile strength for bedding planes ranged from 32 to 88 % of the parent rock strength (intact without visible discontinuities), and this variability could be attributed to geological factors. Tests on incipient mineral veins also showed considerable scatter, the strength depending upon the geological nature of vein development as well as the presence of rock bridges. As might be anticipated, tensile strength of incipient rock joints decreases with degree of weathering as expressed in colour changes adjacent to rock bridges. Tensile strengths of rock bridges (lacking marked discolouration) were found to be similar to that of the parent rock. It is concluded that the degree of incipiency of rock discontinuities needs to be differentiated in the process of rock mass classification and engineering design and that this can best be done with reference to the tensile strength relative to that of the parent rock. It is argued that the science of rock mass characterisation may be advanced through better appreciation of geological history at a site thereby improving the process of prediction and extrapolating properties

Study of non-standard interaction mediated by a scalar field at ESSnuSB experiment

In this paper we study non-standard interactions mediated by a scalar field (SNSI) in the context of ESSnuSB experiment. In particular we study the capability of ESSnuSB to put bounds on the SNSI parameters and also study the impact of SNSI in the measurement of the leptonic CP phase $\delta_{\rm CP}$. Existence of SNSI modifies the neutrino mass matrix and this modification can be expressed in terms of three diagonal real parameters ($\eta_{ee}$, $\eta_{\mu\mu}$ and $\eta_{\tau\tau}$) and three off-diagonal complex parameters ($\eta_{e \mu}$, $\eta_{e\tau}$ and $\eta_{\mu\tau}$). Our study shows that the upper bounds on the parameters $\eta_{\mu\mu}$, $\eta_{\tau\tau}$ and $\eta_{\mu\tau}$ depend upon how $\Delta m^2_{31}$ is minimized in the theory. However, this is not the case when one tries to measure the impact of SNSI on $\delta_{\rm CP}$. Further, we show that the CP sensitivity of ESSnuSB can be completely lost for certain values of $\eta_{ee}$ and $\eta_{\mu\tau}$ for which the appearance channel probability becomes independent of $\delta_{\rm CP}$.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

The ESSnuSB design study: overview and future prospects

ESSnuSB is a design study for an experiment to measure the CP violation in the leptonic sector at the second neutrino oscillation maximum using a neutrino beam driven by the uniquely powerful ESS linear accelerator. The reduced impact of systematic errors on sensitivity at the second maximum allows for a very precise measurement of the CP violating parameter. This review describes the fundamental advantages of measurement at the 2nd maximum, the necessary upgrades to the ESS linac in order to produce a neutrino beam, the near and far detector complexes, the expected physics reach of the proposed ESSnuSB experiment, concluding with the near future developments aimed at the project realization.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures; Corrected minor error in alphabetical ordering of the authors: the author list is now fully alphabetical w.r.t. author surnames as was intended. Corrected an incorrect affiliation for two authors per their reques

Integrated Storage Facility — A New Concept for Mine Waste Storage

A new concept for mine waste storage called Integrated Storage Facility has been touted in places where managing mine waste is extremely challenging. Such a concept has been conceived to be pioneered for a massive copper-gold project in Papua New Guinea, where rugged tropical terrains, tough climatic and geological conditions make building of conventional mine waste storage facility one of the biggest challenges in the country. The developer of Frieda River Copper-Gold project in Papua New Guinea, PanAust, plans to create a huge man-made lake, occupying an area of 12,700 hectares and perched between several valleys at an elevation of 400 to 800 m above sea level. This Integrated Storage Facility will serve two functions: (i) submarine environment for underwater storage of mine tailings and waste rock and (ii) hydro-electric facility to power the mine and excess power for export. The facility is planned to hold 2.13 billion cubic meters of tailings and waste rock over the life of the mine, and 0.04 billion cubic meters of water. Since this infrastructure is neither a classical hydro-power dam, nor a tailings dam, the design of the infrastructure was difficult to benchmark against existing hydro-power dams and tailings dams. In view of the nature of the infrastructure the government of East Sepik Province, a stake holder in the project, engaged a team of engineers to carry out high level review of the design cncept of the infrastructure considering the risks and consequences. This paper is the result of this review and highlights some of the challenges facing such a concept. </p

Conceptual Numerical Modeling of Large-Scale Footwall Behavior at the Kiirunavaara Mine, and Implications for Deformation Monitoring

Over the last 30 years the Kiirunavaara mine has experienced a slow but progressive fracturing and movement in the footwall rock mass which is directly related to the sublevel caving (SLC) method utilized by Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB). As part of an on-going work, this paper focuses on describing and explaining a likely evolution path of large-scale fracturing in the Kiirunavaara footwall. The trace of this fracturing was based on a series of damage mapping campaigns carried out over the last two years, accompanied by numerical modelling. Data collected from the damage mapping between mine levels 320 and 907 m was used to create a 3D surface representing a conceptual boundary for the extent of the damaged volume. The extent boundary surface was used as the basis for calibrating conceptual numerical models created in UDEC. The mapping data, in combination with the numerical models, indicated a plausible evolution path of the footwall fracturing that was subsequently described. Between levels 320 and 740 m the extent of fracturing into the footwall appears to be controlled by natural pre-existing discontinuities, while below 740 m there are indications of a curved shear or step-path failure. The step-path is hypothesised to be activated by rock mass heave into the SLC zone above the current extraction level. Above the 320 m level the fracturing seems to intersect a sub-vertical structure that daylights in the old open pit slope. Identification of these probable damage mechanisms was an important step in order to determine the requirements for a monitoring system for tracking footwall damage. This paper describes the background work for design of the system currently being installed.</p

Rock support system in interaction with the rock

Godkänd; 2011; 20110816 (ysko)</p