Το work with title A three-dimensional model of an underground excavation and comparison with in situ measurements by Exadaktylos Georgios, Liolios Pantelis, Tsouvala Stavroula, Μπαράκος Γεώργιος is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Bibliographic Citation
G. Exadaktylos, S. Tsouvala, P. Liolios and G. Barakos, "A three-dimensional model of an underground excavation and comparison with in situ measurements," Int. J. Numer. Analyt. Meth. Geomech., vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 411-433, Mar. 2007. doi: 10.1002/nag.587
https://doi.org/10.1002/nag.587
In this paper we make the first attempt to construct a three-dimensional (3D) distinct element model (DEM) of an underground room with a central pillar in Dionysos marble deposit. This model can be employed in the future by the quarrymen to improve the design of the underground quarry. In order to decrease the effort and time of the simulations, the approach followed here is first to upscale intact rock properties to the size of the pillar considering also secondary joints, and next to model explicitly the major joint sets that transect the marble by virtue of a 3D DEM. The estimation of the effective marble properties is based on the concept of ‘damage’ as it is defined in damage mechanics theory, the phenomenon of the size effect of strength of intact rocks and the Rock Mass Rating (RMR) classification. Furthermore, a pre-processor has been written in C language for the efficient transfer of the large number of successive excavations around the central pillar to the 3D numerical model. Finally, the validity of this first series of numerical simulations, results and inherent assumptions are checked against in situ stress and deformation measurements inside the underground quarry.