Rockburst Prediction From the Perspective of Energy Release: A Case Study of a Diversion Tunnel at Jinping II Hydropower Station

As a man-made engineering hazard, it is widely accepted that the rockbursts are the result of energy release. Previous studies have examined the unloading of in-situ stress resulting from deep tunnel excavation as a quasi-static process but the transient stress variation during excavation has received less attention. This research discusses rockbursts that happened during the construction of a diversion tunnel at Jinping II hydropower station. The brittle-ductile-plastic (BDP) transition property of Jinping marble was numerically described by the Hoek-Brown strength criterion, and the dynamic energy release process derived from the transient unloading of in-situ stress was studied using an index, local energy release rate. Studies have shown that, due to transient unloading, the strain energy of the surrounding rock mass goes through a dynamic process of decreasing at first, increasing second, then reducing before finally stabilizing. The first decrease of strain energy results from elastic unloading waves and does not cause brittle failure in rock masses, which is consistent with the elastic condition but the secondary reduction of strain energy is because the accumulated strain energy in rock masses exceeds the storage limit, which will inevitably trigger the brittle failure in the rock mass. Thus, the shorter the distance to the tunnel wall the bigger and more intense the energy release. Finally, a relationship between the average value of the local energy release rate and the rockburst intensity was established to assess the risk of rockburst induced by the blasting excavation of a deep tunnel.