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Geophysical investigation to optimize excavation of an underground marble quarry in Stazzema, Italy

Technical University of Turin, Italy

A. M. Ferrero

University of Parma, Italy

Corresponding author: alberto.godio@polito.it

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

A major consideration in planning underground excavation of marble is optimization of the rock extraction ratio—the ratio between the volume of the excavated void and the volume of the residual rock left in place as a supporting structure (pillars, long pillars, etc.).

This involves technical, economic, and ecological factors and guaranteeing the stability of voids during extraction of large intact marble blocks. Determination of stability conditions of an underground excavation requires forecasting the stress and deformation response of the rock mass. This can be done by applying mathematical models to the study of the mechanical behavior of a rock mass. For a rock mass with low fracture density, the best modeling approach represents the rock mass as a block system and is performed in two phases: a geometric modeling to reconstruct the block system and a mechanical modeling to reproduce the stress strain behavior of the interacting blocks.

The reliability of a simulation of the mechanical behavior of a block system depends on the definition of the geometry of the rock mass. The rock mass can be modeled by using the mean orientation and spacing of the joint sets (a joint set is a system of subparallel fractures induced by the same stress event). These kinds of models do not reproduce the structure of the rock mass in a particular location, but determine a configuration that is the product of a statistical distribution of the joints.

Deterministic models provide a reconstructed view of a fractured rock mass to simulate the estimated locations of the discontinuities or fractures detected on the site. The discontinuity locations can be determined by measuring their traces on an exposed surface, but their extent within the rock mass is more difficult to determine.

This article describes how a ground-probing radar system estimated the penetration depths of . . . [Full Text of this Article]