• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.151-159
• /
• 2011

This study performed an experimental study for air-tightness performance evaluation of concrete tube structures with joints. The test specimens consist of a continuous concrete tube, a concrete tube with a joint in the middle, and a segmented concrete tube. The test is performed in such a way that the inner pressure of the tube is dropped down to 0.1atm and the increase of the pressure is monitored with time. An equivalent air permeability is then calculated based on the test results. The results show that, as expected, a structure with more joints or bonds tends to be less air-tight. A sensitivity study shows that the system air-tightness performance level becomes higher as either the diameter or the thickness of the tube increases. Moreover, the increase in the diameter or the thickness of the tube makes an effort to enhance the air-tightness more effective.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.434-445
• /
• 2010

Underground compressed air energy storage (CAES) system in a lined rock cavern is considered one of the promising large-scale energy storage technologies. In this study, permeabilities of concrete lining block and its construction joint, which are the major components of an air tightness system of the undeground CAES, were measured from a model experiment. From the experiment, it was found that intrinsic permeability of construction joint was larger than that of concrete block by the order scale of $10^1{\sim}10^4$, so that it would be very important to control the quality of construction joints in-situ in order to secure air tightness of storage system. And the permeability of construction joint could be decreased as low as that of the concrete block by pasting an acryl-type adhesive on bonding surfaces. Higher degrees of water saturation of the concrete block resulted in the lower permeability, which is more preferable in the viewpoint of air tightness of storage cavern.