A Study on Stability of Expressway Tunnel Surrounding Rock Containing Weak Intercalated Rock

Abstract

Weak intercalated rock plays an important role in the stability of engineering rock mass. It controls the mechanism of deformation and breakage of rocks. Systematic numerical tests have been carried out to study the stability of surrounding rock mass with different distributions of weak intercalated rock has been analyzed by the FEM software ABAQUS. All of the numerical modelings are plain-strain type with elasto-plastic constitutive law and Drucker-Prager failure criterion. Some quantificational results about the influence of weak intercalated rock are summarized, especially the influence on the deformation, stress of surrounding rocks and plastic zone. Because of weak intercalated rock, the stress of surrounding rock appears the character of discontinuity. In addition, the distribution of plastic zone is also affected. When weak intercalated rocks exist in vault, spandrel and bottom, the situation of surrounding rock is comparatively unfavorable. These results have a certain role in guiding significance to the site selection and layout, the majorization of supporting system and the construction of tunnel of the same kind.