• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.169-184
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• 2024

This study investigates acoustic emission (AE) and micro-deformation characteristics of circular openings through biaxial compression experiments. The experimental results showed a significant increase in the frequency, count, energy, and amplitude of AE signals immediately before damage occurred in the circular opening. The differences in frequency and count between before and after damage initiation were significantly pronounced, indicating suitable factors for identifying damage occurrence in circular openings. The results for digital image correlation (DIC) technique revealed that micro-deformation was concentrated around the openings, as evidenced by the spatial distribution of strain. In addition, spalling was observed at the end of the experiments. The AE and micro-deformation characteristics presented in this study are expected to serve as fundamental data for evaluating the stability of underground openings and boreholes for deep subsurface projects.

• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.165-173
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• 2007

The KAERI Underground Research Tunnel (KURT) located in KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) was recently constructed following the site investigation in 2003. Its dimension is 180 m in length, 6 m in width, and 6 m in height, and it has a horseshoe-like cross-sec-lion and is located in the ground to the depth of 90 m. When the tunnel was dug into the ground with 100 m in length, fresh rocks, weathered rocks and fracture-filling materials were taken and examined by mineralogical and chemical analyses. There are phyllosilicate minerals such as illite, smectite and chlorite including calcite, which are filling some faults and cracks of the KURT rock. The illite and smectite usually coexist in the fracture, where their content ratio is different according to which mineral is predominant. There are high concentrations of U and Th in the rocks coated with iron-oxides and filled with secondary materials as compared with those in the fresh rocks. It seems that the radionuclides, which are slowly leached from the parent rocks or exist as a dissolved form in the groundwater and hydrothermal solution, may have been migrated along the fractures and thereafter selectively sorbed and coprecipitated on the iron-oxides and the fracture-filling materials. These results will be very useful far the evaluation of environmental factors affecting the nuclides migration and retardation when long-term safety is considered to the geological disposal of high-level radioactive wastes in the future.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.68-86
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• 2016

Understanding the frictional properties of rock discontinuities is crucial to ensure the stability of underground structures. In particular, the frictional behavior at depth depends on the complex interaction among mechanical, hydraulic, thermal and chemical characteristics and their coupled effects. In this study, a series of shear tests were carried out in a triaxial compression chamber to investigate the shearing behavior of saw-cut granite surface and rough shear surface of synthetic rocks. The test results were analyzed using Coulomb's shear strength criterion. The frictional behavior of saw-cut granite surface showed little variation at different confining, water pressures and temperature conditions, however in case of synthetic rocks, the frictional behavior showed different trend depending on normal stress level. In addition, the variation of stiffness and dilation at different testing conditions were analyzed, and the stiffness and dilation showed little variation at different water pressures and temperature conditions.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.248-260
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• 2004

Damage in brittle rock due to stress increase starts from initiation of microcracks, and then results in failure by forming macro failure planes due to propagation and coalescence of these discrete cracks. Conventionally, continuum approaches using macro-failure criteria or a number of elasto-plastic models have been major solution to implement rock damage and failure. However, actual brittle failure processes can be better described in phenomenological approach if initiation and propagation of discrete fractures are explicitly considered. This study presents damage and failure process of rock using a boundary element code, FRACOD, which has been developed to model fracturing process of rocks. Through a series of numerical uniaxial compressive tests, the feasibility of the developed model was verified, and realistic rock failure process was reproduced considering scale effects in rocks. In addition, the fracturing process and the corresponding rock damage in the vicinity of deep shaft in rock mass were presented as an application of this approach. This approach will be expected to contribute to finding better engineering solutions for the analysis of stability problems in brittle rock masses.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.184-193
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• 1998

In order to dispose radioactive wastes safely, it is needed to understand the mechanical, thermal, fluid behavior of rockmass and physico-chemical interactions between rockmass and water. Also, the knowledge about mechanical and hydraulic properties of rocks is required to predict and to model many conditions of geological structure, underground in-situ stress, folding, hot water interaction, intrusion of magma, plate tectonics etc. This study is based on researches about rock mechanics issues associated with a waste disposal in deep rockmass. This paper includes the mechanical and hydraulic behavior of rocks in varying temperature conditions, thermo-hydro-mechanical coupling analysis in rock mass and deformation behavior of discontinuous rocks. The mechanical properties were measured with Interaken rock mechanics testing systems and hydraulic properties were measured with transient pulse permeability measuring systems. In all results, rock properties were sensitive to temperature variation.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.17 no.1 s.66
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• pp.17-25
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• 2007

Research and development for disposal of contaminants including radioactive wastes in deep underground have been carried out from laboratory works. However, validation and reliability of the data from the laboratory are arguing issues because they are not obtained from real disposal situations. Underground research laboratory (URL) is not only a solution to overcome such limitations, but also a valuable facility for performance assessment as an engineering scale. However, it requires much budget, and environmental issues can give rise to social conflicts easily. Such considering points related to URL are discussed as well as current status of worldwide URLs are introduced. Furthermore study plans for solute transport in a small-scale underground research tunnel (KURT), which was authorized recently as an non-radioactive facility in Korea, also described.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.30-37
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• 2019

Some leading countries in mining have a very quantitative guideline for underground mine opening design which is useful to minimize mine hazards such as rockfall and collapse. Those hazards sometimes can cause a huge damage on human life and property in the mines. Construction guidelines of underground mines in Korea consist of qualitative and general expressions although the workers' safety rules and guides are well provided. Recently, mining operations in Korea are going underground due to the environmental regulations and resource depletion at shallow depth, and therefore there is a growing demand on a specialized and systematic guideline for mine opening design securing the underground stability. In this paper, current status of mining industry, research trends, and mining guidelines in Korea and overseas have been reviewed to give an insight into developing a new Korean guideline for underground mine design.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.219-230
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• 2022

The Geo-Reservoir Experimental Analogue Technology (GREAT) cell was designed to recreate the thermal-hydro-mechanical conditions of deep subsurface in the laboratory. This apparatus can generate a polyaxial stress field using lateral loading elements, which rotate around the longitudinal axis of a sample and is capable of performing a fluid flow test for samples containing fractures. In the present study, numerical simulations were carried out for triaxial compression tests using the GREAT cell and the mechanical behavior of samples under different conditions of lateral loading was investigated. We simulated an actual case, in which triaxial compression tests were conducted for a polymer sample without fractures, and compared the results between the numerical analysis and experiment. The surface strain (circumferential strain) of the sample was analyzed for equal and non-equal horizontal confining pressures. The results of the comparison showed a good consistency. Additionally, for synthetic cases with a fracture, we investigated the effect of the friction and type of fracture surface on the deformation behavior.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.561-573
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• 2023

Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) constructed the KURT (KAERI Underground Research Tunnel) to analyze the hydrogeological/geochemical characteristics of deep rock mass. Numerous boreholes have been drilled to conduct various field tests. The selection of suitable investigation intervals within a borehole is of great importance. When objectives are centered around hydraulic flow and groundwater sampling, intervals with sufficient groundwater flow are the most suitable. This study defines such points as hydraulic outliers and aimed to detect them using borehole geophysical logging data (temperature and EC) from a 1 km depth borehole. For systematic and efficient outlier detection, machine learning algorithms, such as DBSCAN, OCSVM, kNN, and isolation forest, were applied and their applicability was assessed. Following data preprocessing and algorithm optimization, the four algorithms detected 55, 12, 52, and 68 outliers, respectively. Though this study confirms applicability of the machine learning algorithms, it is suggested that further verification and supplements are desirable since the input data were relatively limited.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.187-195
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• 2003

This case study which is to make 2-Dimension earth's crust structures clearly is about the great boring-hole blasting to provide ground vibration source of the reflected wave research on the Korean Peninsula earth's crust structures research. For this study we've done blasting twice-500 ㎏/charge per delay, 1,000 ㎏/charge per delay, and the specifications of blasting are the following - dia.: 300 ㎜, boring-depth : 100m, besides, we used the explosives and electric detonators which have sufficient detonating velocity and very excellent safety, capacity of detonating, accurate delay time. We charged explosives into steel pipe with bulk type to avoid dead pressure by ground water. And then we tested about pipe airtight and blasting to certificate which has no problem by using on this study. In the results, we succeeded each blasting in Seosan, Youngdong. For the Peak Sum Vector(PSV) around the blasting at the main points, its real measured PSV is higher 180 % than estimated PSV with USBM. In this study we can't to be analysis of vibration velocity, but to be key providing vibration source.