• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.327-336
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• 2013

Approximately 70% of the Korean peninsula is composed of mountains, around 99,274 $km^2$. Even worse, population rate of Korea is the No.3 in the world now. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop the potential underground space actively with the concept of another territory to be utilized. The development of underground space should be considered not a choice but an indispensable issue. Since 1970s, many large-scale underground structures have been constructed like as crude-oil storage bins, liquefied petroleum gas storage caverns, and underground pumped storage powerplants. Also, In urban area, the underground facilities such as subway networks, underground shopping mall, underground pedestrian network, electric power tunnels, and car parking lots have been used extensively. The scale of Yeosu oil and gas underground storage facility and Seoul subway systems are one of the massive scale in the world. Recently, the trend of the development of underground space becomes more diverse and larger scale. The current status of Korean underground space developments and strategy are described in this paper.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.229-245
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• 1997

There are Common aspects between the underground oil storage cavern and the radioactive waste disposal facility. Both facilities use appropriately the intrinsic natural berrier characteristics of the rock mass and additionally the engineered barrier system for the long term safety. The geological structures and their hydrogeological characteristics in a faactured rock mass act a major role in the safety and performance of the underground oil storage facility through the design, construction and the operation stages. Because the fracture system distributed in a fractured rock block is complicated owing to their own geometrical and hydrogeological attributes, the hydrogeological perforrmrnce of the facility would depend mainly upon the understandings of their characteristics. This study reviews the uncertainties and key issues which have to be considered to analyse the groundwater flow system in a fractured rock mass and proposes the techniques applicable to characterize the hydrogeological parameter.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.80-89
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• 2008

The influence of in-situ rock stress on the stability of an underground rock structure increases as the construction depth become deeper and the scale of a rock structure become larger. In general, hydraulic fracturing stress measurement has been performed in the surface boreholes of the target area at the design stage of an underground structure. However, for some areas where the high horizontal stresses were observed or where the overstressed conditions caused by topographical and geological factors are expected, it is desirable to conduct additional in-situ stress measurement in the underground construction site to obtain more detailed stress information for ensuring the stability of a rock structure and the propriety of current design. The study area was a construction site for the additional underground oil storage facility located in the south-east part of OO city, Jeollanam-do. Previous detailed site investigation prior to the design of underground structures revealed that the excessive horizontal stress field with the horizontal stress ratio(K) greater than 3.0 was observed in the construction area. In this study, a total of 13 hydraulic fracturing stress measurements was conducted in two boreholes drill from the two water tunnel sites in the study area. The investigation zone was from 180 m to 300 m in depth from the surface and all of the fracture tracing works were carried out by acoustic televiewer scanning. For some testing intervals at more than 200 m ind depth from surface, the high horizontal stress components the horizontal stress ratio(K) greater than 2.50 were observed. And the overall investigation results showed a good agreement with the previously performed test.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.1003-1020
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• 2017

Estimation of groundwater inflow into underground opening is of critical importance for the design and construction of underground structures. Groundwater inflow into a pilot underground storage facility in China was estimated using analytical equations, numerical modeling and field measurement. The applicability of analytical and numerical methods was examined by comparing the estimated and measured results. Field geological investigation indicated that in local scale the high groundwater inflows are associated with the appearance of open joints, fractured zone or dykes induced by shear and/or tensile tectonic stresses. It was found that 8 groundwater inflow spots with high inflow rates account for about 82% of the total rate for the 9 caverns. On the prediction of the magnitude of groundwater inflow rate, it was found that could both (Finite Element Method) FEM and (Discrete Element Method) DEM perform better than analytical equations, due to the fact that in analytical equations simplified assumptions were adopted. However, on the prediction of the spatial distribution estimation of groundwater inflow, both analytical and numerical methods failed to predict at the present state. Nevertheless, numerical simulations would prevail over analytical methods to predict the distribution if more details in the simulations were taken into consideration.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.35-51
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• 2002

This study aims to establish the methodology for design of an optimum water curtain system of the unlined underground oil storage cavern satisfying the requirements of hydrodynamic performance in a volcanic terrain of the south coastal area. For the optimum water curtain system in the storage facility, the general characteristics of groundwater flow system in the site are quantitatively described, i.e. distribution of hydraulic gradients, groundwater inflow rate into the storage caverns, and hydrogeologic influence area of the cavern. In this study, numerical models such as MODFLOW, FracMan/MAFIC and CONNECTFLOW are used for calculating the hydrogeological stability parameters. The design of a horizontal water curtain system requires considering the distance between water curtain and storage cavern, spacing of the water curtain boreholes, and injection pressure. From the numerical simulations at different scales, the optimum water curtain systems satisfying the containment criteria are obtained. The inflow rates into storage caverns estimated by a continuum model ranged from about 120 m$^3$/day during the operation stage to 130~140m$^3$/day during the construction stage, whereas the inflow rates by a fracture network model are 80~175m$^3$/day. The excavation works in the site will generate the excessive decline of groundwater level in a main fracture zone adjacent to the cavern. Therefore, the vertical water curtain system is necessary for sustaining the safe groundwater level in the fracture zone.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.192-202
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• 2013

The domestic demand of natural gas has increased continuously due to the sudden rise of oil price and regulations on greenhouse gas to global warming. In order to improve the supply security of natural gas market in Korea, the agreement on supply of pipeline natural gas (PNG) in Russia was signed between Gazprom and Korea Gas Corporation in 2008. If the supply plan of Russian natural gas is realized, underground storage facilities would be required in order to balance supply and demand of natural gas because the gas demand is concentrated in the winter. This study investigated the safety of the storage facility in quantitative way considering several design parameters such as gas pressure, depth of the storage cavern, rock condition and in-situ horizontal stress ratio. Two dimensional stress analyses were conducted using axi- symmetry condition to examine the behavior of cavern depending upon suggested design parameters. Results showed that the factor of safety, defined as the ratio of 'shear strength'/'shear stress', was largely affected by the depth, rock class and gas pressure but was insensitive to the coefficient of lateral pressure(Ko).

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.207-215
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• 2018

Almost all countries of the world have recently made great efforts to reduce green-house gases to alleviate the global warming threatening human survival, because a huge amount of carbon dioxide as one of the main green-house gases has been emitted from the combustion processes of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. $CO_2$ capture and storage (CCS) technology is a representative method to diminish the green-house gases, and actively investigated by many countries. This study focuses on the design and construction of a high pressure $CO_2$ injection facility to store it to underground, which is the first $CO_2$ injection in Korea following the steps of the $CO_2$ capture from large $CO_2$ emission sources and transportation to the sea. Injection tests of $CO_2$ on the platform on the sea were carried out in Yeongil Bay of Pohang city in the early 2017. Thus, we were able to perceive the necessary operating conditions of the injection facility, injection characteristic, and knowhow of the injection facility. The results obtained from the injection test shall be utilized for facility upgrades and scale-ups.

• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.87-100
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• 1997

This paper presents the results of plate loading test and discontinuum analysis, carried out to study the deformation behaviour and determine the deformation modulus of !rletamorphic andesitic tuff found at the site of a underground oil storage facility in Korea. In the plate loading test, the maximum pressure of 14MPa was applied to the bedrock by using a flat jack(1m in diameter) and the rock anchor system for the reaction against the applied pressure. The values of deformation modulus obtained from this test were compared with those of laboratory test, biaxial test and pressuremeter test. The deformation modulus from plate loading test was generally about half of the intact rock modulus, and the mass modulus of the bedrock at the test site may be affected by discontinuities and ranges between 25 and 350pa. Discontinuum analysis was also performed to simulate plate loading test and study the influence of discontinuities on the deformability of rock mass by simulating the presence of joints at the test area.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.15 no.2 s.42
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• pp.213-227
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• 2005

This study aims to assess the problems with investigation method and to suggest the complementary solutions by comparing the predicted data from surface investigation with the outcome data from underground cavern. In the study area, one(NE-1) of 6 fracture zones predicted during the surface investigation was only confirmed in underground caverns. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the confidence level for prediction. In this study, the fracture classification criteria was quantitatively suggested on the basis of the BHTV images of NE-1 fracture zone. The major orientation of background fractures in rock mass was changed at the depth of the storage cavern, the length and intensity were decreased. These characteristics result in the deviation of predieted predicted fracture properties and generate the investigation bias depending on the bore hole directions and investigated scales. The evaluation of hydraulic connectivity in the surface investigation stage needs to be analyze by the groundwater pressures and hydrochemical properties from the monitoring bore hole(s) equipped with a double completion or multi-packer system during the test bore hole is pumping or injecting. The hydraulic conductivities in geometric mean measured in the underground caverns are 2-3 times lower than those from the surface and furthermore the horizontal hydraulic conductivity in geometric mean is six times lower than the vertical one. To improve confidence level of the hydraulic conductivity, the orientation of test hole should be considered during the analysis of the hydraulic conductivity and the methodology of hydro-testing and interpretation should be based on the characteristics of rock mass and investigation purposes.

• Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.89-102
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• 1996

An integrated model is presented to describe underground flow and mass transport, using a multicomponent multiphase approach. The comprehensive governing equation is derived considering mass and force balances of chemical species over four phases(water, oil, air, and soil) in a schematic elementary volume. Compact and systemati notations of relevant variables and equations are introduced to facilitate the inclusion of complex migration and transformation processes, and variable spatial dimensions. The resulting nonlinear system is solved by a multidimensional finite element code. The developed code with dynamic array allocation, is sufficiently flexible to work across a wide spectrum of computers, including an IBM ES 9000/900 vector facility, SP2 cluster machine, Unix workstations and PCs, for one-, two and three-dimensional problems. To reduce the computation time and storage requirements, the system equations are decoupled and solved using a banded global matrix solver, with the vector and parallel processing on the IBM 9000. To avoide the numerical oscillations of the nonlinear problems in the case of convective dominant transport, the techniques of upstream weighting, mass lumping, and elementary-wise parameter evaluation are applied. The instability and convergence criteria of the nonlinear problems are studied for the one-dimensional analogue of FEM and FDM. Modeling capacity is presented in the simulation of three dimensional composite multiphase TCE migration. Comprehesive simulation feature of the code is presented in a companion paper of this issue for the specific groundwater or flow and contamination problems.