Experimental investigation on rockburst characteristics of highly stressed D-shape tunnel subjected to impact load

Abstract

Rockburst has always been a challenge for the safe construction of deep underground engineering. This study investigated the rockburst characteristics in highly-stressed D-shape tunnels under impact loads from rock blasting and other mining-related dynamics disturbances. The biaxial Hopkinson pressure bar was utilized to apply varying biaxial prestress and the same impact loads to cube specimens with D-shape hole. High-speed camera and digital image correlation (DIC) were used to capture the failure process and strain field of specimen. The test results demonstrate that the D-shape hole specimen experience rockburst under coupled static stress and impact load. Under this circumstance, the rockburst mechanism of the D-shaped hole specimens involves spalling in sidewall induced by impact load, indicating dynamic tensile failure. The high static prestress provides the initial stress field, while the impact load disrupts the stress equilibrium, result in the stress or strain concentration in the sidewall of the D-shape hole, inducing rockburst. Moreover, the rockburst process can be divided into (1) calm stage, (2) crack initiation, propagation, and coalesce stage, (3) spalling stage and (4) rock fragments ejection stage. Impact load triggers rockburst occurrence, while vertical stress further determines the rockburst characteristics. The influence range and magnitude of strain concentration zone and displacement deformation of the tunnel surrounding rock increases with increasing vertical stress, thus inducing more severe rockburst.

Keywords

Rockburst / Spalling / D-shape tunnel / Impact load / Biaxial prestresses / Biaxial Hopkinson pressure bar

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Wuxing Wu: Data curation, Investigation, Writing - original draft. Fengqiang Gong: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Supervision, Writing - review & editing. Zongxian Zhang: Methodology, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42077244), and the Open Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. Z020005). The authors would like to express appreciation to the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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