Spalling and strain bursting has long been recognized as a mechanism of failure in deep underground mines in hard rock and in deep infrastructure tunnels. The latter is a significant growth industry, particularly in Europe where subalpine base tunnels in excess of 10 m wide and dozens of kilometres long are being driven by tunnel boring machine (TBM) through alpine terrain at depths greater than 2 km. In more massive granitoid or gneissic ground, these tunnels have experienced significant spalling damage. En route to a practical predictive technique for this condition, the author utilizes a number of analytical and micromechanical tools to validate a simple empirical predictive model for tunnel spall initiation. The true nature of damage and of yield, as the result of extensile damage accumulation, in hard rocks is examined using these tools. Based on the resultant conceptual model, the author expands on the empirical damage threshold, using a spalling limit to differentiate stress paths that lead to crac...

The 2003 Canadian Geotechnical Colloquium: Mechanistic interpretation and practical application of damage and spalling prediction criteria for deep tunnelling

Previous studies have shown that brittle strength of a rock is generally reduced in the presence of water. However, for siliciclastic rocks, there is a paucity of data on the water-weakening behavior in the cataclastic flow regime. To compare the weakening effect of water in the brittle faulting and cataclastic flow regime, triaxial compression experiments were conducted on the Berea, Boise, Darley Dale, and Gosford sandstones (with nominal porosities ranging from 11% to 35%) under nominally dry and saturated conditions at room temperature. Inelastic behavior and failure mode of the nominal dry samples were qualitatively similar to those of water-saturated samples. At elevated pressures, shear localization was inhibited, and all the samples failed by strain hardening. The compactive yield strengths (associated with the onset of shear-enhanced compaction) in the saturated samples were lower than those in the dry samples deformed under comparable pressure conditions by 20% to 70%. The reductions of brittle strength in the presence of water ranged from 5% to 17%. The water-weakening effects were most and least significant in the Gosford and Berea sandstones, respectively. The relation between water weakening and failure mode is consistently explained by micromechanical models formulated on the basis that the specific surface energy in the presence of water is lowered than that in vacuum by the ratio λ. In accordance with the Hertzian fracture model the initial yield stress in the compactive cataclastic flow regime scales with the grain-crushing pressure, which is proportional to λ 3/2 In the brittle faulting regime, damage mechanics models predict that the uniaxial compressive strength scales with λ 1/2 . In the presence of water the confined brittle strength is lower due to reductions of both the specific surface energy and friction coefficient.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000JB900087

Failure mode and weakening effect of water on sandstone

Reduction in strength and stiffness in rocks attributed to an increase in water content has been extensively researched on a large variety of rock types over the past decades. Due to the considerable variations of texture and lithology, the extent of water-weakening effect is highly varied among different rock types, spanning from nearly negligible in quartzite to 90 % of uniaxial compressive strength reduction in shale. Readers, however, often face difficulties in comparing the data published in different sources due to the discrepancy of experimental procedures of obtaining the water saturation state and how the raw laboratory data is interpreted. In view of this, the present paper first reviews the terminologies commonly used to quantify the amount of water stored in rocks. The second part of the paper reviews the water-weakening effects on rock strengths, particularly focusing on uniaxial compressive strength and modulus, as well as tensile strength, under quasi-static loading and dynamic loading. The correlation relationships established among various parameters, including porosity, density and fabric of rocks, and external factors such as strain rate, surface tension and dielectric constant of the saturating liquid, absorption percentage and suction pressure, are reviewed and presented toward the end of the paper.

L.P. Bielus

Papers

The effect of water on the time-dependent deformation and fracture of a granite