NON-LINEAR FAULT BEHAVIOUR NEAR UNDERGROUND EXCAVATIONS — A BOUNDARY ELEMENT APPROACH

Abstract

A boundary element model for stress/stability analysis of underground excavations in the vicinity of faults is presented. The boundary element formulation adopts the fictitious stress method for the simulation of excavation boundaries and the displacement discontinuity method for the representation of faults. The numerical model employs the Barton–Bandis non-linear joint model for the modelling of the fault behaviour and linear elastic behaviour for the rock. An incremental-iterative in situ stress relaxation algorithm is implemented for the non-linear analysis of the faults. Both deformation and peak strength models of Barton–Bandis are incorporated for modelling the mechanical behaviour of the fault. The non-linear deformation of fault considers the effects of coupling between shear and normal stresses and displacement, joint closure, joint separation, hardening followed by post-peak or residual behaviour. The peak strength model employs a mobilized non-linear shear strength envelope. The differences between linear and non-linear simulation of the fault models are discussed. A comparison of model predictions with the classical Mohr–Coulomb peak strength model with constant joint stiffness is presented. The numerical model is used for a case study of Canadian hard rock underground mine. The shear and normal displacements along the fault during four mining sequences with backfill simulation are presented and discussed.