• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.388-396
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• 2009

Rock bolt is one of the most important supports for tunnelling to prevent excessive ground relaxation at the primary tunnel excavation stage. It forms a ground arch band by confining the ground around a tunnel. Rock bolt has various effects, such as support or hanging effect, internal pressure effect, arching effect, ground improvement effect etc. Most studies on rock bolt focused on the concept of support, but only a few researches on the ground reinforcing effect by pre-tensioning a rock bolts. In this study, large scale model tests are performed to investigate the ground reinforcing effect of rock bolts for regularly jointed rocks. Simple beam model was built to find out the reinforcing effect of jointed rocks, which was reinforced by pre-tensioned rock bolts. Settlement of model beam was analyzed through measuring its sagging for various installation intervals.