Abstract
The borehole method is quite commonly utilized in underground excavation engineering, such as for mining and tunneling, to release high pressure in brittle rock materials for safety control. In this paper, with the purpose of better understanding the failure behavior of brittle rock material with en echelon boreholes, a series of uniaxial compression tests were carried out on sandstone samples in the laboratory. The geometric layout of boreholes was the focus in this study and varied in terms of the number of borehole rows and orientation. In accordance with the experimental results, three failure modes were observed to occur in the sandstone samples, which are tensile failure across the borehole row, tensile failure along the borehole row, and a mixed failure mode. The strength and deformability of sandstone samples are found to significantly depend on the layout of boreholes. The variation in the brittleness of the rock materials was also analyzed with respect to the ratio of the initial stress over peak stress. The findings of this study would enhance the understanding of the borehole method and provide guidance for underground excavation engineering.
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Acknowledgments
The research reported in this manuscript was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant No. ZR2017BEE020). This research was also partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51704183 and 51774192) and the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2018M640646). The financial support from State Key Laboratory for GeoMechanics and Deep Underground Engineering, China University of Mining & Technology was appreciated as well.
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Responsible Editor: Zeynal Abiddin Erguler
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Wu, Y., Yang, XX. & Sun, DK. Experimental investigation of the mechanical behaviors of brittle rock materials containing en echelon boreholes. Arab J Geosci 13, 425 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-020-05440-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-020-05440-5