Studies on Drilling and Cutting Characteristics for Granite Rocks Using Waterjets

워터젯을 이용한 화강암 천공과 절삭 특성에 관한 연구

Although rock excavation is necessary for the effective utilization of urban space, most conventional rock excavation methods, including the blasting method, cause high noise and vibration. Meanwhile, if a high pressure waterjet system is applied to excavate underground spaces in urban areas, the public grievance can be reduced by low noise and vibration. In this study, an abrasive waterjet system is designed and developed to study the influence of various performance parameters such as jet pressure, nozzle traverse speed, stand-off distance, or abrasive feed rate on waterjet excavation performance in laboratory. Using the developed waterjet system, rock drilling characteristics are identified by measuring drilling depths as a function of the jet exposure time. The drilling depth linearly increases with increasing the jet exposure time(under 60sec). Rock cutting characteristics are also obtained with various jet pressures(1600~3200kg/$cm^2$) and nozzle traverse speeds(1.9~14.1mm/s): The cutting depth is nonlinearly related to the jet pressure and traverse speed. Indeed, the cutting depth increases with an increase in the jet pressure and a decrease in the nozzle traverse speed. This trend can be explained by energy transferring/loss mechanism.