• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.16 no.6 s.65
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• pp.506-525
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• 2006

For the design of large scale rock slope which has complex formations and geological structures, generally, insufficiency of geotechnical investigations and laboratory tests are the main factors of slope failures doling construction. In such case, remedial measures to stabilize slope should be selected and applied through reliable investigations and analysis considering the geotechnical characteristics. The rock slope of this study, one of the largest cut slopes in Korea with a length of 520.0 m and maximum height of 122.0 m consists of metasedimentary rocks. And a case study on the causes of large-scale rock slope failure was carried out by analysis of landslides history and site investigations during construction. When the slope with the original design slope of 0.7: 1.0 (H:V) was partially constructed, the slope failure was occurred due to the factors such as poor conditions of rocks (weathered zone, coaly shale and fault shear zone), various discontinuities (joints, foliations and faults), severe rain storm and so on. The types of failures were rockfall, circular failure, wedge failure and the combination of these types. So, the design of slope was changed three times to ensure long-term slope stability. This paper is intended to be a useful reference for analyzing and estimating the stability of rock slopes whose site conditions are similar to those of this study site such as geological structures and geotechnical properties.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.453-467
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• 2018

The excavation performance and the cutting tool wear prediction of shield TBM are very important issues for design and construction in TBM tunneling. For hard-rock TBMs, CSM and NTNU model have been widely used for prediction of disc cutter wear and penetration rate. But in case of soft-ground TBMs, the wear evaluation and the excavation performance have not been studied in details due to the complexity of the ground behavior and therefore few testing methods have been proposed. In this study, a new soil abrasion and penetration tester (SAPT) that simulates EPB TBM excavation process is introduced which overcomes the drawbacks of the previously developed soil abrasivity testers. Parametric tests for penetration rate, foam mixing ratio, foam concentration were conducted to evaluate influential parameters affecting TBM excavation and also ripper wear was measured in laboratory. The results of artificial soil specimen composed of 70% illite and 30% silica sand showed TBM additives such as foam play a key role in terms of excavation and tool wear.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.475-488
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• 2017

Wear prediction of TBM disc cutters is a very important issue for hard rock TBMs as number of cutter head intervention. In this regard, some model such as NTNU, Gehring model, CSM models have been used to predict disc cutter wear and intervention interval. There are some deficiencies in these models. This paper developed a new test method for wear prediction for TBM disc cutter and proposed a new abrasion index. In this regard, different abrasivity indices along with their testing methods are explained. A comparative study is performed to develop the predictability of different cutter life evaluation methods and index. The evaluation of the new methods proposed in this paper shows a very good agreement with the actual cutter life and intervention interval length. The proposed tester and index can be easily used to predict the intervention interval length and cutter wear evaluation in both planning and construction stages of a TBM tunneling project.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.543-552
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• 2014

This research covers correlation analysis between the machine data measured from EPB Shield TBM construction site and the ground condition during excavation, and figures out how the machine data are affected by the change of ground conditions through single and mixed parameter analysis. It was found that when the ground is changed from hard rock to soft rock, the ratio of the cutter torque to thrust force increases. The relationship between the ratio of the cutter torque to thrust force and the penetration rate shows that the ratio has a certain range of values for hard rock; on the other hand, it increases for soft rock. It means that we can recognize a sign of appearance of weak zone by assessing the ratio of the cutter touque to thrust force according to each penetration rate. Multiple regression analysis of the machine data showed that the cutter torque increases with the increases of the total thrust force, and it decreases with the increase of the uniaxial compressive strength of the ground.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.363-372
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• 2022

Precast concrete is an effective method to increase the construction quality and construction speed by optimizing and making the manufacturing conditions similar. In order to more effectively produce a fireproof material-integrated precast duct slab, the purpose of this study was to determine whether the fire resistance performance of the fireproof layer is maintained when a method of increasing the curing rate using a hardening accelerator is used. As a result of performing a fire resistance performance test on specimens classified according to whether or not the hardening accelerator was included, increase of temperature inside the specimen was high in the specimens using the hardening accelerator, and the section loss of the fireproof layer occurred locally on the surface exposed to fire heating. In conclusion, it is judged that the fireproof layer in the case where the strength at 3th day of age is gained within 1 day curing age using a hardening accelerator does not guarantee sufficient fire resistance performance in the conditions used in this study.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.104-126
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• 2024

Buffer and backfill play an essential role in isolating high-level radioactive waste and retard the migration of leaked radionuclides in deep geological disposal system. A bentonite mixture, which exhibits a swelling property, is considered for buffer and backfill materials, and excessive groundwater inflow from surrounding rock mass may affect stability and efficiency of their role as an engineered barrier. Therefore, stringent quality control as well as in-situ installation management and inflow water constrol for buffer and backfill are required to ensure the safety of deep disposal facilities. In this study, we analyzed the design requirements of buffer and backfill by examining various laboratory tests and a field study of the Steel Tunnel Test at the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory in Sweden. We introduced how to control the quality of buffer and backfill construction in-field, and also presented how to handle excessive groundwater inflow into disposal caverns, validating the groundwater retention capacity of bentonite pellets and the effectiveness of geotexile use.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1125-1146
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• 2018

Segment lining applied to the TBM tunnel is mainly made of concrete, and it requires sufficient structural capacity to resist loads received during the construction and also after the completion. When segment lining is design to the Limit State Design, both Ultimate Limit State (ULS) and Service Limit State (SLS) should be met for the possible load cases that covers both permanent and temporary load cases - such as load applied by TBM. When design segment lining, it is important to check structural capacity at the joints as both temporary and permanent loads are always transferred through the segment joints, and sometimes the load applied to the joint is high enough to damage the segment - so called bursting failure. According to the various design guides from UK (PAS 8810, 2016), compression stress at the joint surface can generate bursting failure of the segment. This is normally from the TBM's jacking force applied at the circumferential joint, and the lining's hoop thrust generated from the permanent loads applied at the radial joint. Therefore, precast concrete segment lining's joints shall be designed to have sufficient structural capacity to resist bursting stresses generated by the TBM's jacking force and by the hoop thrust. In this study, bursting stress at the segment joints are calculated, and the joint's structural capacity was assessed using Leonhardt (1964) and FEM analysis for three different design cases. For those three analysis cases, hoop thrust at the radial joint was calculated with the application of the most widely used limit state design codes Eurocode and AASHTO LRFD (2017). For the circumferential joints bursting design, an assumed TBM jack force was used with considering of the construction tolerance of the segments and the eccentricity of the jack's position. The analysis results show reinforcement is needed as joint bursting stresses exceeds the allowable tensile strength of concrete. This highlights that joint bursting check shall be considered as a mandatory design item in the limit state design of the segment lining.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.31-48
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• 2019

The artificial ground freezing (AGF) method is a groundwater cutoff and/or ground reinforcement method suitable for constructing underground structures in soft ground and urban areas. The AGF method conducts a freezing process by employing a refrigerant circulating through a set of embedded freezing pipes to form frozen walls serving as excavation supports and/or cutoff walls. However, thermal expansion of the pore water during freezing may cause excessive deformation of the ground. On the other hand, as the frozen soil is thawed after completion of the construction, mechanical characteristics of the thawed soil are changed due to the plastic deformation of the ground and the rearrangement of soil fabric. This paper performed a field experiment to evaluate the freezing rate of marine clay in the application of the AGF method. The field experiment was carried out by circulating liquid nitrogen, which is a cryogenic refrigerant, through one freezing pipe installed at a depth of 3.2 m in the ground. Also, a piezo-cone penetration test (CPTu) and a lateral load test (LLT) were performed on the marine clay before and after application of the AGF method to evaluate a change in strength and stiffness of it, which was induced by freezing-thawing. The experimental results indicate that about 11.9 tons of liquid nitrogen were consumed for 3.5 days to form a cylindrical frozen body with a volume of about $2.12m^3$. In addition, the strength and stiffness of the ground were reduced by 48.5% and 22.7%, respectively, after a freezing-thawing cycle.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.128-134
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• 2014

Recently, design and construction of street tunnels tend to focus on cost reduction and preservation of nature. Accordingly, research is actively being carried out to quickly detect fires when they occur in tunnels, which have partially closed structures. Among such research, fire detection methods using optical fiber sensors have a wide bandwidth and fast transmission speed, while using light as a medium. Therefore, it does not receive electrical interference and there is almost no loss of information during transmission, while also having little noise as well. In relation to this, a fire monitoring system that can accurately detect the location of fires in real time using shape memory alloy and optical cables was developed in this study. In order to verify the developed method, light loss measurement test was conducted according to indoor temperature changes, while also conducting fire simulation tests by installing test beds in common underground zones with different external environments of temperature and distance. Upon carrying out experiments, the fire monitoring system developed in this study was found to be able to detect fires in long distance sections in real time.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.5-12
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• 2009

As rock bolts become one of the main support systems in tunnels and underground structures, the integrity of the rock bolts affects the safety of these structures. The purpose of this study is the evaluation of rock bolt integrity using wavelet transforms of the guided ultrasonic waves by using transmission test in the field. After several rock bolts with various defect ratios are embedded into a large scale concrete block and rock mass, guided waves are generated by a piezo disk element and measured by an acoustic emission (AE) sensor. The captured signals are analyzed in the time-frequency domain using the wavelet transform based on a Gabor wavelet. Peak values in the time-frequency domain represent the interval of travel time of each echo. The energy velocities of the guided waves increase with an increase in the defect ratio. The suitable curing time for the evergy velocity analysis is proposed by the laboratory test, and in-situ tests are performed in two tunnelling sites to verify the applicability of rock bolt integrity tests performed after proposed curing time. This study proves that time-frequency domain analysis is an effective tool for the evaluation of the rock bolt integrity.