Study on the Erosion Morphology of Cohesive Soil under the Vertical Impact of a High-Pressure Moving Water Jet

Abstract

In the in situ leaching process of ionic rare earth ore, high-pressure moving water jet technology has been applied to improve floor leakage problems. However, it has been found that the morphology of the erosion surface formed by a moving water jet cannot be accurately predicted. The range of the erosion surface has an important influence on the stability of liquid collection engineering and the liquid collection rate of rare earth resources, which is an important basis for the design of liquid collection engineering. To study this, soil-breaking tests using high-pressure moving water jets for a Pingnan mine were conducted. The influences of jet pressure and nozzle moving speed on soil-breaking morphology were analysed. The mechanism of erosion surface formation was revealed by erosion theory, and a method of predicting the erosion surface geometry based on jet pressure and nozzle speed is proposed. The results show that, in the jet pressure range of 5~10 MPa, with increases in jet pressure and decreases in nozzle speed, the geometric shape of the erosion surface tends to expand, and these parameters have no effect on the morphological characteristics of the erosion surface. In the soil-breaking process, the erosion speed decreases with increases in jet distance. As the nozzle speed becomes greater, the degree of the attenuation of erosion speed at a given jet pressure also becomes greater. Soil-breaking depth has a quadratic relationship with jet pressure and a 0.5 power function relationship with nozzle speed. The geometry of the erosion surface has self-similarity and can be divided into straight and curved sections. Accordingly, an empirical formula of the erosion surface geometric shape is proposed. The error of predicting the soil-breaking depth is less than 11%, which can provide a reference for engineering applications.