Rock bridge fracture model and stability analysis of surrounding rock in underground cavern group

Many hydropower stations in southwest China are located in regions of brittle rock mass with high geo-stresses. Under these conditions deep fractured zones often occur in the sidewalls of the underground caverns of a power station. The theory and methods of fracture and damage mechanics are therefore adopted to study the phenomena. First a flexibility matrix is developed to describe initial geometric imperfections of a jointed rock mass. This model takes into account the area and orientation of the fractured surfaces of multiple joint sets, as well as spacing and density of joints. Using the assumption of the equivalent strain principle, a damage constitutive model is established based on the brittle fracture criterion. In addition the theory of fracture mechanics is applied to analyze the occurrence of secondary cracks during a cavern excavation. The failure criterion, for rock bridge coalescence and the damage evolution equation, has been derived and a new sub-program integrated into the FLAC-3D software. The model has then been applied to the stability analysis of an underground cavern group of a hydropower station in Sichuan province, China. The results of this method are compared with those obtained by using a conventional elasto-plastic model and splitting depth calculated by the splitting failure criterion proposed in a previous study. The results are also compared with the depth of the relaxation and fracture zone in the surrounding rock measured by field monitoring. The distribution of the splitting zone obtained both by the proposed model and by the field monitoring measurements are consistent to the validity of the theory developed herein.