Abstract
A large number of statistics indicate that broken rock mass always transforms into a flowing channel and leads to water inrush disasters in mining engineering, such as fault, karst, and strongly weathered rock mass. During the process of water inrush, the structure of the broken rock mass is constantly changing due to seepage erosion under high-velocity flow. Therefore, it is of vital importance to quantitatively evaluate the flow behavior of the water inrush related to the seepage erosion in order to prevent or reduce the risks. This study described a coupled nonlinear flow model, which couples the high-velocity seepage, the small particle migration, and the evolution of the broken rock mass structure. The model was verified firstly for simulation of nonlinear flow behavior by comparing with the traditional one. Then, the proposed model was used to simulate the evolution of particle migration and seepage properties of the water inrush through broken rock mass by a numerical case. The simulation results generally agree well with the existing experimental results. The simulations indicate that small particle migration causes the unstable characteristics of the seepage and the heterogeneity properties of the broken rock mass, which lead to the nonlinear flow behavior of the water inrush in both time and space. From a different perspective, it also indicates that the proposed model is capable of simulating the interaction of high-velocity seepage, small particle migration, and evolution of broken rock mass structure in the process of water inrush.
Highlights
Water inrush is considered to be a kind of serious geologic disaster in tunnel construction and underground mining
It is of vital importance to quantitatively evaluate the flow behavior of water inrush related to the nonlinear seepage
Both the evolution of nonlinear flow and the coupling effect between seepage erosion and permeability properties of the broken rock mass are taken into account
Summary
Water inrush is considered to be a kind of serious geologic disaster in tunnel construction and underground mining. Other models have been built with the flow properties taken into account, such as the flow-stress coupling model [17] and damage-based hydromechanical model [7, 18] These models can be used to simulate the mining-induced groundwater inrushes related to geologic structures but cannot be applied for the simulation of water inrushes associated with seepage erosion. In the practical engineering of water inrush related to seepage erosion, the small particles will be fluidized and carried out of the broken rock mass gradually This will inevitably affect the flow properties of the broken rock mass such as the porosity and permeability and lead to the change in seepage fields [20]. The model was used to investigate the flow mechanism of water inrush intending to gain an insight into the coupling mechanism between nonlinear flow and small particle migration
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