• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.63-75
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• 2020

When tunnel is excavated via drilling and blasting, the excessive overbreak is the primary cause of personal or equipment safety hazards and increasing the cost of the tunnel operation owing to additional ground supports such as shotcrete. The practical management of overbreak is extremely difficult due to the complex causative mechanism of it. The study examines the relationship between rock mass characteristics (unsupported face condition, uniaxial compressive strength, face weathering and alteration, discontinuities- frequency, condition and angle between discontinuities and tunnel contour) and the depth of overbreak through using feed-forward artificial neuron networks. Then, Overbreak Resistance Factor (ORF) has been developed based on the weights of rock mass parameters to the overbreak phenomenon. Also, a new concept of tunnel overbreak management system using ORF has been suggested.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.33-39
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• 2022

This paper presents the long-term behavior of tunnel considering the degradation of concrete lining and surrounding soil. Tunnel is a composite structure which has supporting elements (shotcrete, lining, and rockbolt) and surrounding soils. These supporting elements and surrounding soils undergo the degradation as time goes. A proposed degradation function which has two parameters which control the residual strength and degradation shape was applied to the numerical analysis. The results showed the plastic zone was spread around tunnel due to the degradation leading to the increase in unstability of tunnel.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.105-116
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• 2010

The estimation of surface settlement, ground behavior and tunnel displacement are the main factors in urban tunnel design with shallow depth and unconsolidated soil. On deformation analysis of shallow tunnel, it is important to identify possible deformation mechanism of shear bands developing from tunnel shoulder to the ground surface. This paper investigated the effects of key design parameter affecting deformation behavior by numerical analysis using nonlinear model incorporating the reduction of shear stiffness and strength parameters with the increment of the maximum shear strain after the initiation of plastic yielding. Numerical parametric studies are carried out to consider the reduction of shear stiffness and strength parameters, horizontal stress ratio, cohesion and shotcrete thickness.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.571-583
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• 2013

The use of Thin Spray-on Liner (TSL) as an alternative to shotcrete has drastically increased since 1990s when it was first developed and introduced to mines. In this study, tensile strength test, bond strength test, compression test with specimens coated by TSL, and two kinds of bending tests proposed by EFNARC (2008) were performed with two kinds of TSLs with different material compositions in order to evaluate their support capacities. As a result, both TSLs were shown to be satisfactory for the minimum performance requirements for a structural rock support suggested by EFNARC (2008) and tensile strength of a TSL was shown to increase as its content of polymer was higher. In contrast, its bond strength was shown to increase proportional to the content of a cementitious component especially at the early age.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.197-206
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• 2004

The ground anchor support system may not be occasionally used because of space limitations in urban excavation sites nearby the existing structures. In this case, soil nailing system with relatively short length of nails could be efficiently adopted as an alternative method. The general soil nailing support system, however, may result in excessive deformations particularly in an excavation zone of the existing weak subsoils. Pretensioning the soil nails then could play important roles to reduce deformations mainly in the upper part of the nailed-soil excavation system as well as to improve local stability. In this study, a newly modified soil nailing technology named as the PSN (Pretension Soil Nailing), is developed to reduce both facing displacements and ground surface settlements in top-down excavation process as well as to increase the global stability. Up to now, the analytical procedure and design technique are proposed to evaluate maximum pretension force and stability of the PSN system. Also, proposed are techniques to determine the required thickness of a shotcrete facing and to estimate probability of a failure against the punching shear, Based on the proposed procedure and technique, effects of the radius of a influence circle and dilatancy angle on the thickness of a shotcrete facing, bonded length and safety factors are analyzed. In addition, effects of the reduction of deformations expected by pretension of the soil nails are examined in detail throughout an illustrative example and the $FLAC^{2D}$ program analysis. And a numerical approach is proposed PSN system using the shear strength reduction technique with the $FLAC^{2D}$ program.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.23-36
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• 2008

Soil nailing system can be mentioned to a method of supporting as the shear strength of in-situ soils is increased by passive inclusions. In the general soil nailing system, facing walls are used in two kind of a lattice concrete block or a cast in placed concrete wall. A case of lattice concrete blocks is used in slow slopes greater than 1(V):0.7(H). Also, a case of a cast in placed concrete wall is used in steep slopes less than 1(V):0.5(H). The cast in placed concrete walls are constructed to 30 cm thick together with a shotcrete facing. In this study, the assembling soil nailing method as a new soil nailing system will be proposed. This method is assembly construction using precast concrete panels with 20 cm thick. So, the ability of construction and the quality of facings can be improved more than a conventional soil nailing system. This method can be obtained the effects that a global slope stability increase, as precast concrete panels are immediately put on cutting face after excavating a slope. In this study, confining effects of concrete panels using the assembling soil nailing system were found out by large scaled load tests. In the tests, the load-settlement relationship to an assembling soil nailing system due to the stiff facings as concrete panels appeared to be better than a typical soil nailing system with shotcrete facings.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.346-355
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• 2019

When evaluating pillar stability in very closely spaced tunnels, a local safety factor (strength/stress ratio) at the minimum width has been widely used. Tension bolts have been frequently applied as reinforcement for the cases where safety factors are less than 1.0 from FEM stress analysis. However, the local safety factor shows a constant value irrespective of the change in pillar width/tunnel diameter (PW/D) and the safety factor of the pillar is underestimated because the variation of deviation stress is relatively small even when the pre-stressing is applied to the tension bolt. In addition, the average safety factor proposed by Hoek and Brown(1980) was reviewed, but the pillar safety factor was relatively overestimated when the width of the pillar was increased. As an alternative, the SRM safety factor using shear strength reduction method shows the effect of changing the safety factor in the case of no reinforcement and tension bolt reinforcement as the pillar width/tunnel diameter(PW/D) changes. The failure shape is also similar to the previous limit theory result. In this study, the safety factor was evaluated without considering rock bolt and shotcrete to distinguish reinforcing effect of tension bolt.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.261-283
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• 2023

This study aimed to review the performance stability of PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) fiber reinforcing materials among the synthetic fiber types for which the application of performance reinforcing materials to fiber-reinforced concrete is being reviewed by examining short-term and long-term performance changes. To this end, the residual performance was analyzed after exposing the PET fiber to an acid/alkali environment, and the flexural strength and equivalent flexural strength of the PET fiber-reinforced concrete mixture by age were analyzed, and the surface of the PET fiber collected from the concrete specimen was examined using a scanning microscope (SEM). The changes in were analyzed. As a result of the acid/alkali environment exposure test of PET fiber, the strength retention rate was 83.4~96.4% in acidic environment and 42.4~97.9% in alkaline environment. It was confirmed that the strength retention rate of the fiber itself significantly decreased when exposed to high-temperature strong alkali conditions, and the strength retention rate increased in the finished yarn coated with epoxy. In the test results of the flexural strength and equivalent flexural strength of the PET fiber-reinforced concrete mixture, no reduction in flexural strength was found, and the equivalent flexural strength result also did not show any degradation in performance as a fiber reinforcement. Even in the SEM analysis results, no surface damage or cross-sectional change of the PET reinforcing fibers was observed. These results mean that no damage or cross-section reduction of PET reinforcing fibers occurs in cement concrete environments even when fiber-reinforced concrete is exposed to high temperatures in the early stage or depending on age, and the strength of PET fibers decreases in cement concrete environments. The impact is judged to be of no concern. As the flexural strength and equivalent flexural strength according to age were also stably expressed, it could be seen that performance degradation due to hydrolysis, which is a concern due to the use of PET fiber reinforcing materials, did not occur, and it was confirmed that stable residual strength retention characteristics were exhibited.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.413-427
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• 2013

Thin Spray-on Liners(TSLs) based on polymer materials have been considered as an alternative to shotcrete and wire mesh in relatively fair rock conditions, and used in mines since 1990s. Nevertheless, Few experimental studies on their mechanical properties necessary for the evaluation of their bearing capacities as a support member have been carried out. In this study, tensile and bond strengths of two kinds of TSLs with different material compositions were measured at the age of 7 days. In addition, two kinds of bending tests proposed by EFNARC (2008) to simulate representative failure mechanisms of TSLs were carried out on the same materials and curing age as in tension and pull-out tests. From the tests, tensile strength of a TSL is shown to increase as its content of polymer is higher. In contrast, its bond strength seems to be in inverse proportion to its polymer content. Especially, the TSL material in which a cementitious component is included with relatively smaller polymer content shows a faster hardening characteristic which results in higher resistance to de-bonding between a TSL and a substrate. As a result, it is shown that the performance of TSLs might be dependent upon its corresponding polymer content.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.305-313
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• 2012

Unreinforced masonry buildings represent a significant portion of the existing and historical buildings around the world. Recent earthquakes have shown the need for seismic retrofitting for these types of buildings. Various types of retrofitting materials (i.e., shotcrete, ECC and Fiber Reinforced Polymer sheets (FRPs)) for unreinforced masonry buildings (URM) have been developed. Engineers prefer to use FRPs, because these materials enhance the shear strength of the wall without expansion of wall sectional area and adding weight to the total structure. However, the complexity of the mechanical behavior of the masonry wall and the lack of experimental data from walls retrofitted by FRPs may cause problems for engineers to determine an appropriate retrofitting level. This paper investigate in-plane behavior of URM and retrofitted masonry walls using two different types of FRP materials to determine and provide information for the retrofitting effect of FRPs on masonry shear walls. Specimens were designed to idealize the wall of a low-rise apartment which was built in 1970s in Korea with no seismic reinforcements with an aspect ratio of 1. Retrofitting materials were carbon FRP and Hybrid sheets which have different elastic modulus and ultimate strain capacities. Consequently, this study evaluated the structural capacity of masonry shear walls and the retrofitting effect of an FRP sheet for in-plane behavior. Also, the results were compared to the results obtained from the evaluation method for a reinforced concrete beam retrofitted with FRPs.