Some Issues in Tunnelling through Rock Mass and Their Possible Solutions

There are still many issues in tunneling through rock mass, which require some solutions for the safety of tunnels during and after constructions. For example, squeezing with or without swelling and rockburst in underground excavations are major modes of failure in both short-term and long-term. To assess the real-time safety of tunnels in such grounds, the monitoring of transformations of stored mechanical energy in rock into different forms of energy involving variations of the electrical potential, magnetic field, heat release, kinetic energy during deformation and fracturing processes may be quite usefull. Underground structures may be damaged by earthquakes when permanent ground movements occur in/along the underground structures. This problem is still not addressed in tunneling. The author attempts to point out some issues in tunneling through rock mass and address their possible solutions in this article.

Keywords:

Squeezing , rockbursting , multi-parameter monitoring , seismic damage , permanent ground deformation