Mechanical Deformation Characteristics of Hard Rock in Deep Excavation

In the process of deep tunnel excavation, the surrounding rock mass, which often endures high initial geo-stress, is in the state of typical unloading. As the adjustment of stress induced by excavation, rock mass behaves a peculiar kind of mechanical deformation characteristics, different from those in loading conditions. As thus, a series of representative unloading tests on hard granite from DaGangShan power station in China, which is being excavation at 1500 meters deep below earth surface, are carried out to simulate dynamically excavation process for studying the peculiar mechanical deformation characteristics. On the basis of unloading tests, a series of research results are acquired as follows： (1) Under unloading condition, lateral deformation occurs in the unloading direction and volumetric strain changes from compression deformation to dilation deformation. (2) Under unloading condition, hard granites behave brittle failure and Mogi-coulomb criterion can well describe the failure characteristics. (3) According to curves of unloading tests, the constitutive model is deduced for simulation analysis.