Joint-Liner Interaction Tutorial 19-1

Joint-Liner Interaction Tutorial

This tutorial demonstrates how to model liner support in a jointed rock
mass, when joints intersect excavation boundaries on which liner support
will be installed. In order to correctly model the interaction of the joint-
liner intersections, we must define a Composite Liner which includes a
joint at the liner-rock interface.

In this case, the liner will resist slip on the joints such that it remains
intact and continuous around the excavation.

The analysis will be conducted in two parts. The first part shows the
response of a tunnel in jointed rock without a liner. The second part
shows the effect of adding the liner support.

Topics Covered

• Rock joints

• Composite Liner with joint

• Generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion

• Copying boundaries and relative coordinates

• Graph joint data

• Liner bending moments

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Model

Start the Phase2 Model program.

Project Settings
Open the Project Settings dialog from the Analysis menu and make
sure the General tab is selected. Set the Number of Stages to 2. In this
analysis, the first stage will bring the unexcavated rock to equilibrium
and the tunnel will be excavated in the second stage. Define the units as
being “Metric, stress as MPa”. Click OK to close the Project Settings
dialog. If you see a warning about the unit system then hit OK.

Boundaries
First we will define the excavation. Select Add Excavation from the
Boundaries menu. Type the letter i to indicate you wish to draw a circle
(or right click and choose Circle) and hit Enter. You will now see the
dialog for entering a circle. Select the Centre and radius option and set
the radius to 3.2. Set the Number of segments to 40 as shown.

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Click OK. You will now see a circle that you can drag around with the
mouse. Enter 0,0 for the centre coordinates and hit Enter. The excavation
geometry is now defined.

To define the external boundary, select Add External from the

Boundaries menu. The default boundary is a box around the excavation
and the default expansion factor is 3. Click OK to accept these defaults.
The model should now look like this.

Joints
From the Boundaries menu, select Add Joint. You will see the Add
Joint dialog, which allows you to select a Joint property type, end
condition and installation stage. We will use the default selections, so just
select OK.

NOTE: see the Phase2 Help system for a discussion of the Joint End
Condition option.

Now enter the following coordinates defining the joint.

−23 , −17

23 , 0.5

Enter

The joint is now added to the model. Note that the “closed” Joint End
Condition is indicated by an icon of a circle with a triangle inside, at both
ends of the joint.

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Note that the two points defining the joint were actually entered just
outside of the external boundary, and Phase2 automatically intersected
the boundaries and added new vertices.

We now wish to generate a series of parallel joints. The easiest way to

accomplish this is to “copy and paste” the original joint. To do this, right
click on the joint and select Copy Boundary from the resulting menu.
You can now enter relative coordinates to make a copy of the joint shifted
by some amount. At the prompt enter:

@0,3

This will create a copy of the joint shifted 0 m in the x direction and 3 m
in the y direction.

Repeat these steps by right clicking on the original joint each time and
entering the following relative coordinates:

@0,5

@0,7

@ 0 , 10

@ 0 , 11

@ 0 , 13

@ 0 , 16

Your model should now appear as shown.

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Mesh
Now that all of the boundaries have been defined we can generate the
finite element mesh. Select the Mesh Setup option in the Mesh menu.
The default options should be sufficient for this model. Ensure that the
Mesh Type is Graded, the Element Type is 3 Noded Triangles, the
Gradation Factor is 0.1 and the Default Number of Nodes on All
Excavations is 75. Click the Discretize button and then the Mesh button.
Click OK to close the dialog. The model should now look like this:

Field Stress
Select Field Stress from the Loading menu. The tunnel is assumed to
be deep underground and the stress is assumed to be caused by the
overburden. Select Gravity for the Field Stress Type and enter 1100 m for
the Elevation. All other values can be left as default values. The dialog
should appear as shown.

Click OK to close the dialog.

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Material Properties
Select Define Materials from the Properties menu. For Material 1,
change the name to Graphitic Phyllite. For Initial Element Loading select
Field Stress & Body Force. Leave the Unit Weight at the default value
(0.027 MN/m3). For Young’s Modulus enter 1645 MPa and for Poisson’s
ratio enter 0.3. Under Strength Parameters select Generalized Hoek-
Brown for the Failure Criterion. Set the Material Type to be Plastic.
Enter the Generalized Hoek-Brown parameters as shown below:

Click OK to close the dialog.

NOTE: see the Phase2 Help system for a discussion of the meaning of the
different Generalized Hoek-Brown parameters.

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Joint Properties
Select Define Joints from the Properties menu. Change the name of
Joint 1 to Rock Joints. For Criterion, select Mohr-Coulomb and change
the friction angle to 20 degrees. Leave all other values as default. Note
that leaving the Initial Joint Deformation option turned on means that
the joints will deform due to the field stress as well as stresses induced by
excavations. The dialog should appear as below:

Click OK to close the dialog.

Excavation
The tunnel is to be excavated in the second stage so click on the Stage 2
tab at the bottom of the screen. From the Properties menu select
Assign Properties. From the Assign Properties dialog, select Excavate.
Because of the joint boundaries passing through the tunnel, the easiest
way to excavate all sections of the tunnel is by using a selection window.
Click and hold down the left mouse button at a point above and to the left
of the tunnel. Drag the mouse to draw a box completely enclosing the
tunnel. Release the button and all sections of the tunnel should be
excavated as shown.

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You can also excavate the tunnel by clicking inside each section that is
separated by joints – but you must be careful to click inside all sections.

You have now completed modelling the tunnel without support. Save the
model by choosing Save As from the File menu.

Compute

Run the model by pressing the Compute button on the toolbar. The
analysis may take several minutes to run since the unsupported tunnel
will experience extensive failure and large deformations.

Once the model has finished computing (Compute dialog closes), click the
Interpret button to view the results.

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Interpret (unsupported)

After you select the Interpret option, the Phase2 Interpret program starts
and reads the results of the analysis. You should see a screen similar to
the following that shows the maximum compressive stress for Stage 1.

You can see that stress generally increases with depth as expected.
There are some discontinuities in stress across the joints, however the
variations in observed stress are small.

Click on the Stage 2 tab. You will now see low stresses around the tunnel
with higher stresses further out. This suggests that the rock around the
tunnel has failed and cannot support high stresses. Confirm this by
plotting the failed elements using the Display Yielded Elements
button on the toolbar. You can also plot the sections of joints that have
yielded by clicking on the Display Yielded Joints button. The model
should appear as follows.

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There is obviously extensive failure around the tunnel that extends a

significant distance into the rock mass. Also, most of the joints close to
the tunnel have failed.

Now plot the deformation by changing the contours to Total Displacement

and clicking on the Display Deformed Boundaries button. Turn off the
Yielded Elements and zoom in on the excavation. The model will appear
as shown.

You can see how the tunnel has been squeezed under stress and also how
its shape has changed to become more elliptical. The joints are also
showing some slip, as can be observed from the offset between opposite
sides of each joint, where each joint intersects the tunnel boundary.

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You can examine the slip on the joints by plotting the shear
displacement. Right click on the joint that intersects the top of the
tunnel. Select Graph Joint Data. For the Vertical Axis select Shear
Displacement and click Create Plot. The graph should look like this:

This plot shows almost 10 cm of slip on the joint near the tunnel surface.
NOTE: the “gap” in the joint displacement graph (no data points) is due
to the excavated section of the joint passing through the tunnel.

We now wish to minimize the deformation and failure in the tunnel by

adding support in the form of a shotcrete liner.

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Liner Support

Go back to the Phase2 Model program. Open the saved file from the
previous part of this tutorial if necessary. We will use the same model as
before but now we will add liner support and observe the effect.

Modeling Joint-Liner Interaction

To summarize the model so far – we have an excavation which is
intersected by rock joints, and the excavation requires liner support in
order to prevent collapse.

IMPORTANT!!! In order to correctly model the interaction of the joint-

liner intersections, we must define a Composite Liner which includes a
joint at the liner-rock interface.

As you will see when you plot the liner forces, this correctly models the
shear force which is applied to the liner by the differential slip of the joint
endpoints at the joint-tunnel intersections.

Composite Liner Properties

For the purpose of this example, it will be sufficient to define a Composite
Liner which is composed of a single liner and a joint.

First we will specify the properties of the single liner. Select Define
Liners from the Properties menu. Change the Name of Liner 1 to
Shotcrete and leave all other values as the default. The dialog should look
like this:

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Click OK to close the dialog.

Now we need to define the properties of the joint between the liner and
the rock. Select Define Joints from the Properties menu. Click on the
tab for Joint 2. Change the name to Liner Joint and leave all other
selections as default values as shown.

Click OK to close the dialog.

Now we can set up the composite liner. Select Define Composite from
the Properties menu.

Our composite liner is to be made up of the shotcrete layer and a joint.

For Composite Type, select “1 liner (with slip)” from the pull-down menu.
Change the Joint to Liner Joint and ensure that the First Liner is set to
Shotcrete. The dialog should look like this:

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Click OK to close the dialog.

NOTE: it is very important in this model that you use a composite liner
with a joint. If you only use a single liner then it will not resist slip on the
rock joints and the liner will segment and become discontinuous around
the tunnel.

Add Support
In this model, we will add the liner in Stage 2. To add the composite liner,
first go to Stage 2. Select Add Liner from the Support menu. In the Add
Liner dialog, make sure the Composite Liner checkbox is selected. The
Liner Property should be Composite 1. The value for Install at stage
should be 2 as shown.

Click OK to close the dialog. Now select all of the segments that make up
the tunnel, by clicking and dragging a selection window (hold down the
left mouse button and drag a window to encompass the entire tunnel).
Hit Enter to finish selection.

Your model should look like this for Stage 2.

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Your model is now finished. Save your model by choosing Save As from
the File menu.

Compute

Run the model by pressing the Compute button on the toolbar. The
analysis should take under a minute to run.

Once the model has finished computing (Compute dialog closes), click the
Interpret button to view the results.

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Interpret (with support)

The model behaviour for Stage 1 will be the same as before. Select the
Stage 2 tab. You will now see a ring of high stress around the tunnel but
slightly away from the tunnel boundary. This suggests that the rock
directly adjacent to the boundary has failed and cannot support high
stresses. Confirm this by plotting the failed elements using the Display
Yielded Elements button on the toolbar. You can also plot the sections
of joints that have yielded by clicking on the Display Yielded Joints
button. Zoom in on the excavation and it should appear as shown.

You can see that elements around the tunnel have failed in shear and
also that joints near the top and bottom of the tunnel have failed (shown
as red lines). However the failure of elements and joints is much less
severe than observed in the unsupported model. Note that none of the
liner elements can fail since we set the liner material type to be elastic.

Now plot the deformation by changing the contours to Total Displacement

and clicking on the Display Deformed Boundaries button. Turn off the
Yielded Elements and Yielded Joints. You can see that the tunnel (and
liner) have displaced inwards and that there is little slip on the joints
compared with the amount of tunnel closure. The tunnel has also
maintained its circular shape.

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The amount of slip on the joints is small but it is not zero. You can
examine the slip on the joints by plotting the displacement. Right click on
the joint that intersects the top of the tunnel. Select Graph Joint Data.
For the Vertical Axis select Shear Displacement and click Create Plot.
The graph should look like this:

It is clear that the amount of slip is increasing as the joint approaches the
tunnel, however, the slip on the joint is about 50 times less than the slip
observed in the unsupported tunnel.

Now examine the behaviour of the liner. Go back to the window showing
the tunnel in Stage 2. Turn off the deformed boundaries display. Right
click on the liner and select Show Values → Bending Moment. The screen
should look like this:

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You can see that there are very large bending moments where the liner is
intersected by the rock joints. The joints are trying to slip but they are
being resisted by the liner, which undergoes shear deformation causing
the large observed bending moments. It is clear that the liner is
responsible for maintaining the integrity of the tunnel.

Additional Exercise

Repeat the previous analysis, but instead of applying a Composite Liner

with a joint, apply a regular (single layer) liner. If you run the analysis,
you will see the difference in the liner behaviour.

As you can see from the following figure, the Liner bending moment
results are completely different from the Composite Liner (with joint)
bending moments.

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Liner bending moment (single layer liner, with no joint between liner and
rock).

At the tunnel / rock joint intersections, the liner bending moments

decrease to minimum values, rather than maximum values. This is
because the liner is effectively discontinuous at these locations, and does
not resist differential movement of opposite sides of each joint.

If you view the Deformed Boundaries, you will see that differential
movement of the joint ends takes place, similarly to the model with no
liner support.

The reason that the Composite Liner (with joint) gives such different
results from a single layer liner (with no joint), is due primarily to the
way in which Phase2 assigns node numbering at the intersections of
joints. When a joint is present between the liner and the rock, this
correctly models the physical interaction of the joints, tunnel boundary
and liner.

Finally, the following figure illustrates the deformations for all three
cases (unsupported, single liner, composite liner). NOTE: the scale factors
used to display the deformed boundaries are as follows: unsupported
(Scale Factor = 1), single liner (Scale Factor = 1), composite liner (Scale
Factor = 20).

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As you can see, the overall deformation for the single liner is not much
different from the unsupported case. The differential movement at the
joint ends is actually more pronounced for the single liner compared to
the unsupported case. For the composite liner, the overall deformations
are about 20 times less than the unsupported case, and the deformation
pattern is relatively uniform and circular.

Deformed boundaries for (left to right) – unsupported, single liner,

composite liner. Scale factor for deformations = 1, 1, 20, respectively.

This concludes the tutorial; you may now exit the Phase2 Interpret and
Phase2 Model programs.

Phase2 v.6.0 Tutorial Manual