• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.75-85
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• 2003

Laboratory model blast and in-situ rock blast tests were conducted to determine blast-induced stress wave propagation characteristics under different explosive types, different loading conditions and different mediums. Dynamic numerical approaches were conducted under the same conditions as experimental tests. Stress magnitudes at mid-point between two blast holes which were detonated simultaneously increased up to two times those of single hole detonation. The rise time of maximum stress in a decoupled charge condition was delayed two times that of a fully charged condition. Dynamic numerical analysis showed almost similar results to blast test results, which verifies the effectiveness of numerical approaches fur optimizing the tunnel blast design. Dynamic numerical analysis was executed to evaluate rock behavior and damage of the contour hole, the sloping hole adjacent to the contour hole in the road tunnel blasting pattern. The rock damage zone of the sloping hole from the numerical analysis was larger than that of the contour hole. Damage in the sloping hole can be reduced by using lower density explosive, by applying decoupled charge, or by increasing distance between the sloping hole and the contour hole.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.449-457
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• 2019

Physical model tests were first performed to investigate the failure pattern of multiple pillar-roof support system. It was observed in the physical model tests, pillars were design with the same mechanical parameters in model #1, cracking occurred simultaneously in panel pillars and the roof above barrier pillars. When pillars 2 to 5 lost bearing capacity, collapse of the roof supported by those pillars occurred. Physical model #2 was design with a relatively weaker pillar (pillar 3) among six pillars. It was found that the whole pillar-roof system was divided into two independent systems by a roof crack, and two pillars collapse and roof subsidence events occurred during the loading process, the first failure event was induced by the pillars failure, and the second was caused by the roof crack. Then, for a multiple pillar-roof support system, three types of failure patterns were analysed based on the condition of pillar and roof. It can be concluded that any failure of a bearing component would cause a subsidence event. However, the barrier pillar could bear the transferred load during the stress redistribution process, mitigating the propagation of collapse or cutting the roof to insulate the collapse area. Importantly, some effective methods were suggested to decrease the risk of catastrophic collapse, and the deep-hole-blasting was employed to improve the stability of the pillar and roof support system in a room and pillar mine.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.62-72
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• 2023

The aging of plant structures due to industrialization in the 1970s has increased the demand for blast demolition. While blasting can reduce exposure to environmental pollution by shortening the demolition period, improper blasting design and construction plans pose significant safety risks. Thus, it is vital to consider optimal blasting demolition conditions and other factors through collapse behavior simulation. This study utilizes a 3-D combined finite-discrete element method (FDEM) code-based 3-D DFPA to simulate the collapse of a chimney structure in a thermal power plant in Seocheon, South Korea. The collapse behavior from the numerical simulation is compared to the actual structure collapse, and the numerical simulation result presents good agreement with the actual building demolition. Additionally, various numerical simulations have been conducted on the chimney models to analyze the impact of the duct size in the pre-weakening area. The no-duct, duct, and double-area duct models were compared in terms of crack pattern and history of Z-axis displacement. The findings show that the elapse-time for demolition decreases as the area of the duct increases, causing collapse to occur quickly by increasing the load-bearing area.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.38-46
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• 1994

This paper concerns the design of blasts adjacent to structures and facilities. In order to investigate the site characteristics, measurements of in-situ wave propagation and laboratory tests of rock cores taken from the boreholes were carried out. Effects of rock media and delay intervals on ground vibration levels were identified from over sixty measurements of three times of test blasts. For practical use in the field, an empirical propagation equation was derived so as to reflect the characteristics of rock media and delay effects. Safe limits of vibration level for structures were conservatively established based on various suggested criteria. Safe limits for facilities were adopted so that vibration levels induced by blasting should not exceed the allowable limits specified in the manufacturer's installation condition. Suggested were blast pattern and operation to enhance the rock fracturing and to reduce the ground vibration levels under the restricted conditions.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.1-14
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• 2022

To review the appropriateness of current regulations on the simple explosive storage facility, the effects of internal explosion on the structural stability of the standard storage facility were analyzed by means of both FEM analyses and field experiments. As a result, it was found that the explosion-proof performance of the existing storage structure was not sufficient for 15 kg of emulsion-type explosive. Thus, an alternative method of splitting explosives was tested by conducting sympathetic detonation experiments. This method worked properly as expected, and the proper amount of splitted explosive was determined according to the test results. In addition, a storage structure with open ceiling was found to be very effective because explosion pressure was released so rapidly that the damage of the facility could be reduced significantly. Hence, such a structural pattern was proposed as a new design scheme for simple explosive storage facility.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.26-36
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• 2020

With the increase of expansion and use of the underground space, the possibility of an underground explosion by terrorists is increasing. In this study, after modeling a circular tunnel excavated at a depth of 50m, an explosion load was applied to the inside of the tunnel. As for the explosion load, the explosion load of the maximum explosive amount for six types of vehicle booms proposed by ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) was calculated. For the rock mass around the circular tunnel, three types of rock grades were selected according to the support pattern suggested in the domestic tunnel design. Nonlinear dynamic analysis was performed to evaluate the influence of the ground structure by examining the surface displacement using the explosion load and rock mass characteristics as parameters. As a result of the analysis, for grade 1 rock, the influence on the uplift of the surface should be considered, and for grade 2 and 3 rocks, the influence on a differential settlement should be considered. In particular, for grade 3 rocks, detailed analysis is required for ground-structure interaction within 40m. Also, it is considered that the influence of Young's modulus is the main factor for the surface displacement.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.431-449
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• 2022

As many tunnels generally have been constructed, various experiences and techniques have been accumulated for tunnel design as well as tunnel construction. Hence, there are not a few cases that, for some usual tunnel design works, it is sufficient to perform the design by only modifying or supplementing previous similar design cases unless a tunnel has a unique structure or in geological conditions. In particular, for a tunnel blast design, it is reasonable to refer to previous similar design cases because the blast design in the stage of design is a preliminary design, considering that it is general to perform additional blast design through test blasts prior to the start of tunnel excavation. Meanwhile, entering the industry 4.0 era, artificial intelligence (AI) of which availability is surging across whole industry sector is broadly utilized to tunnel and blasting. For a drill and blast tunnel, AI is mainly applied for the estimation of blast vibration and rock mass classification, etc. however, there are few cases where it is applied to blast pattern design. Thus, this study attempts to automate tunnel blast design by means of machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence. For this, the data related to a blast design was collected from 25 tunnel design reports for learning as well as 2 additional reports for the test, and from which 4 design parameters, i.e., rock mass class, road type and cross sectional area of upper section as well as bench section as input data as well as16 design elements, i.e., blast cut type, specific charge, the number of drill holes, and spacing and burden for each blast hole group, etc. as output. Based on this design data, three machine learning models, i.e., XGBoost, ANN, SVM, were tested and XGBoost was chosen as the best model and the results show a generally similar trend to an actual design when assumed design parameters were input. It is not enough yet to perform the whole blast design using the results from this study, however, it is planned that additional studies will be carried out to make it possible to put it to practical use after collecting more sufficient blast design data and supplementing detailed machine learning processes.