Brittle Rock Failure in the Steg Lateral Adit of the Lötschberg Base Tunnel

Summary: During the crossing of brittle rock formations at the Lötschberg base tunnel, failure phenomena have been observed both at the tunnel face and at the walls. A detailed analysis has been undertaken to explain these behaviours, based on the recent developments of Canadian research on brittle failure mechanisms. At the tunnel walls, a very good agreement is found between the calculated and observed damage and between two prediction methods, i.e. a semi-empirical failure criterion and elastic calculations with the "brittle Hoek-Brown parameters.” Near the face, due to the 3D nature of the stress conditions, some limitations of these approaches have been highlighted, and the growth of wall failure has been analysed. This research allowed a better understanding of the brittle rock mass behaviour at the Lötschberg base tunnel and showed that brittle failure processes dominate the behaviour of deep, highly stressed excavations in massive to moderately jointed rock. It also illustrates where improvements to the adopted approaches are require

Ground response curves for rock excavations supported by ungrouted tensioned rockbolts

A numerical analysis has been developed for the design of ungrouted tensioned rockbolts as support of excavations under axisymmetric conditions. The bolts dimensions (length, cross-section, longitudinal and circumferential spacings), their stiffness, their pre-tension load and the delay of installation are taken into account. Moreover, the method effects three main improvements in the usual theory, taking into consideration: 1. the reaction force transferred to the rock mass in the bolts anchoring zone, 2. the elastic recompression of the carrying ring surrounding the excavation due to the bolts preload, and 3. the relative displacement of the bolts ends which has a repercussion on their tension. Since the usual rock-support interaction analysis is only available when the rock mass and the support behave independently, an alternative solution has been explored for the bolting system (since it cannot be considered as an internal support). It consists to include the effect of the rockbolts into the ground reaction curve. In this paper, the principles of the analysis are explained and a numerical application is taken