Water infusion has long been taken as an effective way to eliminate coal burst risk as coal properties can be loosen and soften by water infusion. However, not all industrial trials of water infusion for coal burst prevention have been necessarily effective in all situations as the effectiveness of this method can be affected by water infusion time, coal properties and the parameters of water injection. Hence, some fundamental issues including the effects of water infusion time on burst propensity and energy evolution need to be further discussed. In this paper, four groups of coal specimens with 0 day, 5 days, 10 days, and 15 days water saturation time are tested under uniaxial compression load with the application of AE monitoring. To comprehensively compare the burst behavior of coal specimens under different water saturation time, stress-strain curves, AE counts, fragmentation characteristics and burst propensity of these groups are analyzed. It was found by this research that sufficient water saturation can mitigate the burst behavior of coal samples while insufficient water infusion might cannot reach the burst mitigation aims.

To study the evolution mechanism of cracks in rocks with multiple defects, rock-like samples with multiple defects, such as strip-shaped through-going cracks and cavity groups, are used, and the crack propagation law and changes in AE (acoustic emission) and strain of cavity groups under different inclination angles are studied. According to the test results, an increase in the cavity group inclination angle can facilitate the initial damage degree of the rock and weaken the crack initiation stress; the initial crack initiation direction is approximately 90°, and the extension angle is approximately 75~90° from the strip-shaped through-going cracks; thus, the relationship between crack development and cavity group initiation strengthens. The specific performance is as follows: when the initiation angle is 30°, the cracks between the cavities in the cavity group develop relatively independently along the parallel direction of the external load; when the angle is 75°, the cracks between the cavities in the cavity group can interpenetrate, and slip can occur along the inclination of the cavity group under the action of the shear mechanism rupture. With the increase in the inclination angle of the cavity group, the AE energy fluctuation frequency at the peak stress increases, and the stress drop is obvious. The larger the cavity group inclination angle is, the more obvious the energy accumulation and the more severe the rock damage; when the cavity group angle is 30° or 75°, the peak strain of the local area below the strip-shaped through-going fracture plane is approximately three times that when the cavity group angle is 45° and 60°, indicating that cracks are easily generated in the local area monitored by the strain gauge at this angle, and the further development of the cracks weakens the strength of the rock, thereby increasing the probability of major engineering quality damage. The research results will have important reference value for hazard prevention in underground engineering projects through rock with natural and artificial defects, including tunnels and air-raid shelters.

A criterion and a method for solving a problem on the prevention of mine working fracture under the action of tectonic and gravitational forces are offered. Based on minimal criterion, theoretical analysis of the definition of the optimal shape of working in the rock mass weakened by arbitrarily located rectilinear cracks was carried out. A closed system of algebraic equations allowing to minimize the stress state and stress intensity factors depending on mechanical and geometrical characteristics of the rock, is constructed. The relation between the shape of the working and the stress intensity factors and also location and sizes of the cracks is obtained. The found optimal shape of working increases load-bearing capacity of the rock.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of the proposed hybrid teaching-learning based optimization algorithm on the optimum design of reinforced concrete (RC) cantilever retaining walls. For this purpose, three different design examples are optimized with 100 independent runs considering continuous and discrete variables. In order to determine the algorithm performance, the optimization results were compared with the outcomes of the nine powerful meta-heuristic algorithms applied to this problem, previously: the big bang-big crunch (BB-BC), the biogeography based optimization (BBO), the flower pollination (FPA), the grey wolf optimization (GWO), the harmony search (HS), the particle swarm optimization (PSO), the teaching-learning based optimization (TLBO), the jaya (JA), and Rao-3 algorithms. Moreover, Rao-1 and Rao-2 algorithms are applied to this design problem for the first time. The objective function is defined as minimizing the total material and labor costs including concrete, steel, and formwork per unit length of the cantilever retaining walls subjected to the requirements of the American Concrete Institute (ACI 318-05). Furthermore, the effects of peak ground acceleration value on minimum total cost is investigated using various stem height, surcharge loads, and backfill slope angle. Finally, the most robust results were obtained by HTLBO with 50 populations. Consequently the optimization results show that, depending on the increase in PGA value, the optimum cost of RC cantilever retaining walls increases smoothly with the stem height but increases rapidly with the surcharge loads and backfill slope angle.

The sufficient early strength of primary support is crucial for stabilizing the surroundings, especially for the tunnels constructed in soil. This paper introduces the Steel-Concrete Composite Support System (SCCS), a new support with high bearing capacity and flexible, rapid construction. The bearing characteristics and construction performance of SCCS were systematically studied using a three-dimensional numerical model. A sensitivity analysis was also performed. It was found that the stress of a π-shaped steel arch decreased with an increase in the thickness of the wall, and increased linearly with an increase in the rate of stress release. In the horizontal direction of the arch section, the nodal stresses of the crown and the shoulder gradually increased in longitudinally, and in the vertical direction, the nodal stresses gradually decreased from top to bottom. The stress distribution at the waist, however, was opposite to that at the crown and the shoulder. By analyzing the stress of the arch section under different installation gaps, the sectional stress evolution was found to have a step-growth trend at the crown and shoulder. The stress evolution at the waist is more likely to have a two-stage growth trend: a slow growth stage and a fast growth stage. The maximum tensile and compressive stresses of the secondary lining supported by SCCS were reduced on average by 38.0% and 49.0%, respectively, compared with the traditional support. The findings can provide a reference for the supporting technology in tunnels driven in loess.

The research presented in this paper deals with dynamic stability analysis of the graphene nanoplatelets (GPLs) reinforced composite spinning disk. The presented small-scaled structure is simulated as a disk covered by viscoelastic substrate which is two-parametric. The centrifugal and Coriolis impacts due to the spinning are taken into account. The stresses and strains would be obtained using the first-order-shear-deformable-theory (FSDT). For Poisson ratio, as well as various amounts of mass densities, the mixture rule is employed, while a modified Halpin-Tsai model is inserted for achieving the elasticity module. The structure's boundary conditions (BCs) are obtained employing GPLs reinforced composite (GPLRC) spinning disk's governing equations applying principle of Hamilton which is based on minimum energy and ultimately have been solved employing numerical approach called generalized-differential quadrature-method (GDQM). Spinning disk's dynamic properties with different boundary conditions (BCs) are explained due to the curves drawn by Matlab software. Also, the simply-supported boundary conditions is applied to edges 𝜃=𝜋/2, and 𝜃=3𝜋/2, while, cantilever, respectively, is analyzed in R=R_i, and R₀. The final results reveal that the GPLs' weight fraction, viscoelastic substrate, various GPLs' pattern, and rotational velocity have a dramatic influence on the amplitude, and vibration behavior of a GPLRC rotating cantilevered disk. As an applicable result in related industries, the spinning velocity impact on the frequency is more effective in the higher radius ratio's amounts.

Uncertainties in geomechanical input parameters which mainly related to inappropriate data acquisition and estimation due to lack of sufficient calibration information, have led wellbore instability not yet to be fully understood or addressed. This paper demonstrates a workflow of employing Quantitative Risk Assessment technique, considering these uncertainties in terms of rock properties, pore pressure and in-situ stresses to makes it possible to survey not just the likelihood of accomplishing a desired level of wellbore stability at a specific mud pressure, but also the influence of the uncertainty in each input parameter on the wellbore stability. This probabilistic methodology in conjunction with Monte Carlo numerical modeling techniques was applied to a case study of a well. The response surfaces analysis provides a measure of the effects of uncertainties in each input parameter on the predicted mud pressure from three widely used failure criteria, thereby provides a key measurement for data acquisition in the future wells to reduce the uncertainty. The results pointed out that the mud pressure is tremendously sensitive to UCS and SHmax which emphasize the significance of reliable determinations of these two parameters for safe drilling. On the other hand, the predicted safe mud window from Mogi-Coulomb is the widest while the Hoek-Brown is the narrowest and comparing the anticipated collapse failures from the failure criteria and breakouts observations from caliper data, indicates that Hoek-Brown overestimate the minimum mud weight to avoid breakouts while Mogi-Coulomb criterion give better forecast according to real observations.

In this study, design charts for estimating consolidation settlement are proposed according to finite strain consolidation theory using a nonlinear constitutive relationship equation. Results of parametric sensitivity analysis shows that the final settlement, initial height, and initial void ratio exerted the greatest effect, and the coefficients of the void ratio-effective-stress. Proposed design charts were analyzed for three regions using a representative constitutive relationship equation that enables major dredged-reclaimed construction sites in Korea. The regional design charts can be calculated accurately for the final settlement because it is applied directly to the numerical analysis results, except for reading errors. A general design chart applicable to all marine clays is proposed through correlation analysis of the main parameters. A final self-weight consolidation settlement with various initial void ratios and initial height conditions should be estimated easily using the general design chart and constitutive relationship. The estimated final settlement using the general design chart is similar to the results of numerical analysis obtained using finite strain consolidation theory. Under an overburden pressure condition, design charts for estimating consolidation settlement are proposed for three regions in Korea.