• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.528-546
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• 2018

Cases of TBM tunnelling have been consistently increasing worldwide. In many recent subsea and urban tunnelling projects, TBM excavation has been preferably considered due to its advantages over drill and blast tunnelling. Difficult ground conditions are highly probable to appear in subsea and urban tunnels because of the shallow working depth and alluvial characteristics. Under the difficult ground conditions, ground reinforcement measures should be considered including grouting, while it is of great importance to select the optimal grout material and injection method to cope with the ground condition. The benefits from TBM excavation, such as fast excavation, increased safety, and reduced environmental impact, can be achieved by applying appropriate ground reinforcement with the minimum overrun of cost and time. In this report, various grouting methods were reviewed so that they can be applied in difficult ground conditions. In addition, domestic and international cases of successful ground reinforcement for difficult grounds were introduced for future reference.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.105-118
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• 2008

Shotcrete is one of the main support materials in tunnelling. Its bonding state on excavated rock surfaces controls the safety of the tunnel: De-bonding of shotcrete from an excavated surface decreases the safety of the tunnel. Meanwhile, the bonding state of shotcrete is affected by blasting during excavation at tunnel face as well as bench cut. Generally, the bonding state of shotcrete can be classified as void, de-bonded, or fully bonded. In this study, the state of the back-surface of shotcrete is investigated using impact-echo (IE) techniques. Numerical simulation of IE technique is performed with ABAQUS. Signals obtained from the IE simulations were analyzed at time, frequency, and time-frequency domains, respectively. Using an integrated active signal processing technique coupled with a Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) analysis, the bonding state of the shotcrete can be evaluated accurately. As the bonding state worsens, the amplitude of the first peak past the maximum amplitude in the time domain waveform and the maximum energy of the autospectral density are increasing. The resonance frequency becomes detectable and calculable and the contour in time-frequency domain has a long tail parallel to the time axis. Signal characteristics with respect to ground condition were obtained in case of fully bonded condition. As the ground condition worsens, the length of a long tail parallel to the time axis is lengthened and the contour is located in low frequency range under 10 kHz.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.286-294
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• 2010

Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) has installed and operated seven seismoacoustic (infrasound) arrays as well as seismic stations in Korea. The seismo-acoustic array, which consists of co-located seismometers and micro-barometers, can observe both seismic and infrasonic signals from distant explosive phenomena. The infrasound is defined as low frequency (<20 Hz) acoustic waves in atmosphere. In particular, it can be detectable at long distance due to its low energy attenuation during propagation in atmosphere. KIGAM adopted the infrasound technology to discriminate surface explosions from earthquakes only because the surface explosion generally generates infrasound following seismic signal. In addition to surface explosions, these arrays have detected diverse geophysically natural and artificial phenomena, such as infrasound signal from the North Korean nuclear test. This review introduced the state-of-the-art studies and examples of infrasonic signals in and around the Korean Peninsula. In conclusion, infrasound technology would be clearly accepted itself as a new Earth monitoring technology by expanding its detectable regime to lithosphere-Earth surface-atmosphere. In future, an advanced technology, which allows to analyze seismic and infrasonic wave fields together, will enlarge the understanding of geophysical phenomena and be used as a robust analysis method for remote explosive phenomena in the broad infrasound regime.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.465-473
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• 2018

The application of singular value decomposition (SVD) filtering is examined for attenuation of the ground-roll in land seismic data. Prior to the SVD computation to seek singular values containing the highly correlatable reflection energy, processing steps such as automatic gain control, elevation and refraction statics, NMO correction, and residual statics are performed to enhance the horizontal correlationships and continuities of reflections. Optimal parameters of SVD filtering are effectively chosen with diagnostic display of inverse NMO (INMO) corrected CSP (common shot point) gather. On the field data with dispersion of ground-roll overwhelmed, continuities of reflection events are much improved by SVD filtering than f-k filtering by eliminating the ground-roll with preserving the low-frequency reflections. This is well explained in the average amplitude spectra of the f-k and SVD filtered data. The reflectors including horizontal layer of the reservoir are much clearer on the stack section, with laminated events by SVD filtering and subsequent processing steps of spiking deconvolution and time-variant spectral whitening.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.459-466
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• 2012

A difficulty encountered in engineering seismic mapping is that reflection events from shallow discontinuities are commonly overlapped with coherent noise such as air wave, direct waves, head waves, and high-amplitude surface waves. Here, the radial trace transform, a simple geometric re-mapping of a trace gather (x-t domain) to another trace gather (v-t domain), is applied to investigate the rejection effect of coherent linear noises. Two different types of data sets were selected as a representative database: good-quality data for intermediate sounding (hundreds of meters) in a sedimentary basin and very noisy data for shallow (${\leq}50m$) mapping of the weathered zone and bedrock surface. Results obtained with cascaded application of the radial transform and low-cut filtering proved to be as good as, or better than, those produced using f-k filtering, and were especially effective for air wave and direct wave. This simple transform enables better understanding of the characteristics of various types of noise in the RT domain, and can be generally applied to overcoming diffractions and back-scatterings caused by joints, fractures, and faults commonly that are encountered in geotechnical problems.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.137-153
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• 2019

Estimating tunnel construction time and costs are the most fundamental part of a tunnel project planning, which has been generally assessed on a deterministic basis until now. In this paper, excavation cycle time was investigated for two road tunnels and one subway tunnel, and the results were compared with the Standard of Construction Estimate (SE), which is made for the estimation of construction time and cost in a design stage. The results show that the difference in cycle time between SE and actual cycle time is 50%, 7% and 31% respectively for the three tunnels, which means that SE does not reflect practical operation time. The major reasons of the difference are skilled level of tunneling workers, the change of operation sequences for more effective operations, much more complicated working atmosphere in a tunnel than the assumption of SE etc. Finally, even though the results can not be generalized since investigated tunnels are only 3, but it is thought that SE needs to be upgraded into the model able to consider quite common situations through additional tunnel investigation and studies in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.10
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• pp.17-30
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• 2009

Underground construction such as tunneling can induce damages on the surrounding rock mass, due to the stress concentration of in situ stresses and excessive energy input during construction sequence, such as blasting. The developed damage on the rock mass can have substantial influence on the mechanical and hydraulic behaviors of the rock masses around a tunnel. In this study, investigation on the generation of damage around an opening in a jointed rock model under biaxial compression condition was conducted. The joint dip angles employed are 30, 45, and 60 degrees to the horizontal, and the synthetic rock mass was made using early strength cement and water. From the biaxial compression test, initiation and propagation of tensile cracks at norm to the joint angle were found. The propagated tensile cracks eventually developed rock blocks, which were dislodged from the rock mass. Furthermore, the propagation process of the tensile cracks varies with joint angle: lower joint angle model shows more stable and progressive tensile crack propagation. The development of the tensile crack can be explained under the hypothesis that the rock segment encompassed by the joint set is subjected to the developing moment, which can be induced by the geometric irregularity around the opening in the rock model. The experiment results were simulated by using discrete element method PFC 2D. From the simulation, as has been observed from the test, a rock mass with lower joint angle produces wider damage region and rock block by tensile cracks. In addition, a rock model with lower joint angle shows progressive tensile cracks generation around the opening from the investigation of the interacted tensile cracks.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.169-178
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• 2024

While stable mid- to large-scale underground hydrogen storage infrastructures are needed to meet the rapidly increasing demand for hydrogen energy, evaluating the safety of explosion vibrations in adjacent buildings is becoming important because of gas explosions in underground hydrogen storage facilities. In this study, a numerical analysis of vibration safety effects on nearby building structures was performed assuming a hydrogen gas explosion disaster scenario in a low-depth underground hydrogen storage facility. A parametric study using a meta-model was conducted to predict changes in ground dynamic behavior for each combination of ground properties and to analyze sensitivity to geotechnical influencing factors. Directly above the hydrogen storage facility, the unit weight of the ground had the greatest influence on the change in ground vibration due to the explosion, whereas, farther away from the facility, the sensitivity of dynamic properties was found to be high. In addition, in evaluating the vibration stability of ground building structures based on the predicted ground vibration data and blasting vibration tolerance criteria, in the case of large reinforced concrete building structures, the ground vibration safety was guaranteed with a separation distance of about 10-30 m.