10th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium

ARMS10 29 October to 03 November, 2018, Singapore

The ISRM International Symposium for 2018

Estimation of deformational characteristics of Rock-Shotcrete Interface

R. Naira, A. Malika*, A. Singhb, B. Routa
a
Heavy Civil Infrastructure, Larsen & Toubro Ltd., Chennai, India
b
Project Scientist, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
*akx.malik@gmail.com (corresponding author’s E-mail)

Abstract

With advances in fiber technology, shotcrete has become an essential support in the underground
structures. The rock-shotcrete (R-S) interface plays a key role in determining the distribution of in-situ
loads. This interface behavior is quite complex in reality and the interaction of interface of R-S play
an important role in governing the bending moments and the thrust experienced by the shotcrete lining
in tunnels and caverns. In the current study, an experimental procedure is presented to determine the
deformational behavior and mechanical parameters of rock-shotcrete. Unconfined compression tests
were performed on a composite material made of rock and steel fiber reinforced shotcrete (SFRS).
Experiments were conducted with the consideration of stress conditions that prevail in most practical
cases of underground opening. Cylindrical specimens were prepared using intact rock of
Garnetiferous sillimanite gneiss and SFRS specimens obtained from the walls of underground tunnel.
This paper discusses deformational behavior of rock, SFRS and R-S. The failure behavior of R-S is
discussed and analytical calculations are presented, based on experimental observations on failure of
R-S. The discussion will help in modeling of the R-S interface in numerical simulation, development
of constitutive models for R-S and for better understanding of the R-S support system in underground
structures.

Keywords: Rock Shotcrete (R-S) Interface, Steel Fiber Reinforced Shotcrete (SFRS), Compression,
Failure Behavior

1. Introduction

In the field of rock mechanics, material properties is one of the pre-requisite for realistic numerical
simulation of underground structures. Mechanical parameters of the materials influence the design of
these structures to a large extent. These days, shotcrete has become one of the most important material
to be used as a primary support system during lining of underground structures. The interaction
between the shotcrete and rock plays a critical role in the transfer of stresses from the rockmass to
shotcrete. There are only a few studies which discusses the rock-shotcrete interaction in detail. It has
been shown by (Bae et al., 2003; 2004) through laboratory experiments and numerical simulations
that the interfacial properties of rock mass and shotcrete exhibit time dependent behavior. However,
in order to evaluate the mechanical interface properties, it has to be proven that the rock and shotcrete
behaves as a composite material.
Various researchers have performed direct shear tests on different composite materials to
determine the interfacial properties and shear behavior (Tong et al., 2016; Koupouli et al., 2016; Nasir
and Fall, 2008, 2010; Saiang et al., 2005). The failure of shotcrete-rock under different loading
conditions in the tunnels has been studied by Malmgren, 2008 and rock strength is found to be an
influencing parameter.
For the determination of the shear behavior of natural and artificial discontinuities in the rockmass,
direct shear test is widely used (ASTM D5607-16). However, triaxial setup is also used to understand
the shear behavior of discontinuities under special arrangement (Goodman 1989). The shear behavior
of quartzite under direct shear test and triaxial test have been compared (Brady and Brown, 1999) and
shown to give acceptable results. Various constitutive model exists for the behavior of Shotcrete
including elastic, viscoplastic, viscoelastic-plastic, damage plasticity etc. (Neauner et al., 2017) and
on behavior of rock Mohr-Coulomb, Drucker-Prager, Hoek Brown (Hoek et al., 2002; Labuz and
Zang, 2012). Nataraja et al., 1999 presented an analytical solution for making stress strain curves for
SFRS. However, no constitutive model exists in literature, which discusses the failure behavior of
rock-shotcrete as a composite material.
 10th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium
ARMS10 29 October to 03 November, 2018, Singapore
The ISRM International Symposium for 2018

In the current paper, results of compression tests on rock, SFRS and R-S are investigated.
Observations are given on the failure R-S and the effect of the different types of strain gauge
arrangements is discussed. Experimental observations on the failure of R-S specimen are verified with
analytical calculations using basic stress-strain relations.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1 Materials used
(i) Rock
Rock used for the study was Garnetiferous sillimanite gneiss. It is a medium grained rock with
randomly distributed inequigranular, fine to medium sized violet colored garnets interspersed with
quartz and biotite flakes. Along with random orientation of minerals, planar fabric of quartz and
sillimanite was found. The garnets were subhedral, cracked and showed poikolitic texture at some
places. Petrographic analysis on different specimens showed that the garnets (20-25%) were aligned
in a direction lined by quartz (25-40%), orthoclase (20-40%), Kylanite (5-12%), sillimanite (8-12%)
and biotite (5-8%) grains. Highly strained grains of quartz ribbons indicated rock having been under
stress in past. Rock cores obtained from the field are shown in Figure 1 (a). The physical and index
properties of the rock is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: Physical and Index properties of Garnetiferous sillimanite gneiss rock

Property Value
Density (g/cc) 2.7
Porosity (%) 4.5-6.5
Durability (%) 99
P-wave velocity (m/s) (slightly weathered rock) 3300-3600
Tensile Strength (MPa) 3.5-5.8

(ii) Steel Fiber Reinforce Shotcrete (SFRS)

A shotcrete grade of M40 was prepared. The specification and proportion of ingredients is given in
Table 2. Total binder content was 480 Kg/m3 and the admixtures used were 0.55 to 0.75 % by wt. of
the binder. PCE based BASF Glenium SKY 8233 was used for preparation of M40 Shotcrete.
Specimen of cured hardened shotcrete were cored from the field after 28 days of spraying of shotcrete,
as shown in Figure 1(b).

Table 2: Steel Fiber reinforced shotcrete ingredients

Material Quantity per cum of SFRS
Cement OPC (365 kg)
Pozzolona GGBS (100 kg), Silica Fume (15 kg)
Fibre Low carbon steel fiber with aspect ratio 65 (35 kg)
Admixture PCE based (2.6 to 3.6 Kg)
Porable Water w/c = 0.37 (173 Lit.)
Fine Aggregate 1 Natural sand (596 kg)
Fine Aggregate 2 Crushed sand (596 kg)
Coarse aggregate 10 mm (642 kg)

Figure 1 (a) Rock Cores (b) SFRS Specimen after 28 days (c) Rock-Shotcrete Specimen
 10th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium
ARMS10 29 October to 03 November, 2018, Singapore
The ISRM International Symposium for 2018

(iii) Rock-Shotcrete (R-S)

Rock-Shotcrete specimens were drilled out from the walls of underground tunnel. NX sized specimen
were bored from the wall of the tunnel using a triple barrel boring machine. The rock mass was
observed to be fair but it was difficult to obtain cores of enough length as the rockmass has been
affected by blasting. Therefore, only a few specimen were taken for the study and multistage loading
was done on rock-shotcrete specimen.

2.2. Experimental method

Normal compression test was conducted using MTS compression machine of loading capacity
3000KN. The specimen for the compression tests were prepared as per ASTM standards. The
specimens were capped before testing to ensure parallel loading on the specimen. The compression
tests were done under servo-controlled mode with a displacement rate of 0.01mm/sec. To determine
the interface behavior for the rock-shotcrete specimens different loading and unloading tests were also
done on some specimens under load control mode with a rate of 0.1 KN/sec.

Strain Gages

Fig.2. (a) Rock (b) SFRS (c) R-S with strain gage at interface (d) R-S with separate strain gages

For the R-S specimens two different types of strain gages arrangement were made. In the first
arrangement, as shown in Figure 2(c), the strain gages were attached to the R-S interface. Magnetic
extensometers were also attached to record the deformations around the R-S interface as shown in
Figure 3(a). Second type of strain gage arrangement included attaching strain gages separately on the
rock and shotcrete as shown in Figure 2(d) and Figure 3(b).
For loading and unloading a special compression testing setup was used as shown in Fig 3(b). The
testing process was carefully monitored, load and deformations were recorded after every interval of
0.01 mm of deformation. Stress and strain data for all specimens have been calculated and mean
values are reported. The variation observed in the strains from strain gauge and magnetic
extensometer readings was observed to be insignificant.

Fig 3. (a) R-S with strain measurements on interface (b) R-S with separate strain measurement for
Rock and Shotcrete
 10th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium
ARMS10 29 October to 03 November, 2018, Singapore
The ISRM International Symposium for 2018

3. Result and Analysis

The stress strain curves are normally affected due to the testing conditions like size and shape of
specimens, stiffness of equipment, loading rate, and rate of deformation. Other heterogeneous
characteristics of rocks like grain size, mineral content, and presence of asperities affect the results.
Even the characteristics of SFRS like w/c ratio, aggregate type, and fiber content can affect the results.
However, it was carefully attended that the rock used are of similar condition and SFRS casting and
transportation does not affect the materials.

3.1 Failure Behavior of Rock and SFRS

Stress strain plot for a typical rock and SFRS specimen under compression test is shown in Fig. 4(a)
and Fig 4(b) respectively. It was observed that rock specimen failed in shear along with splitting of
few small pieces on sides. The SFRS was observed to be failing under shear. The strain at failure for
SFRS was higher as compared to rock specimen which showed higher ductility of SFRS as compared
to the rock due to addition of steel fibers in SFRS. Although the compressive strength of SFRS was
found to be satisfying the design strength of 40 MPa, minor deviations of range 5-8% were observed
in the modulus and strain values of SFRS. The average value of properties are shown in Table 3.

Figure 4 (a) Stress-Strain curve for Rock (b) Stress strain for SFRS

3.2 Failure behavior of rock-shotcrete (R-S)

Figure 5(a) shows the stress-strain plot for the R-S specimen tested with strain measurements at the
interface. It was observed during the testing that the shotcrete region would bulge out initially and
minor splitting would appear on the surface. Later, the crack propagated towards the interface and
simultaneously rock was observed to be fracturing before complete failure of the specimen. The
failure strain of the R-S specimen was observed to be slightly higher that the rock specimen. The
increase in deformation can also be attributed to the movement of the interface between the rock and
shotcrete and also due to fibers present in the shotcrete due to which it gives higher strain.

Fig 5. (a) Stress strain plot of R-S (b) Failure of R-S specimen
 10th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium
ARMS10 29 October to 03 November, 2018, Singapore
The ISRM International Symposium for 2018

The elastic modulus of the R-S was found to be higher than the rock and lower than the shotcrete as
shown in Table 3. The results obtained from the strain gauges and from magnetic extensometers were
compared and normalized. No significant variations in the strain values for the two arrangements was
observed. The average of mechanical properties of R-S obtained from the experiments are given in
Table 3. The experimental observation made on the failure of the R-S is verified with analytical
calculations in section 3.3.

3.3 Analytical calculation for R-S

To check the results obtained on rock and SFRS specimens and to ascertain the experimental
observations in Rock-shotcrete and various analytical calculations were done.

Table 3: Mechanical properties of Rock, SFRS and R-S

Property Rock SFRS R-S (Experiment) R-S (analytical)
Compressive Strength (MPa) 28.7 42 27.5 -
Elastic Modulus (GPa) 13.9 25.2 19.3 17.9
Poisson ratio 0.22 0.20 - -

3.3.1 Young’s modulus of R-S

Based on the assumption that liquid shotcrete occupies all voids and no axial deformations takes place
in the interface of R-S specimen, the deformations in the rock, SFRS and R-S specimen can be related
by Eq. 1
(1)
 RS   R   S
Where  = deformation  L  / E ; where  = stress, L = length of specimen, E = elastic young’s
modulus. For a rock and SFRS of length of L/2 each and R-S specimen of length L, Eq. 1 simplifies to
2( E R  E S )
E RS  (2)
ER  ES
Where ERS, ER and ES represent the Elastic modulus of R-S, rock and SFRS respectively. Using the
values obtained from the tests presented in Table 3, ERSa is calculated analytically which comes out to
be 17.9 GPa. Whereas, ERS obtained from the experiments on R-S is 19.3 GPa. Therefore, the results
obtained from the experiment are comparable with analytical results obtained using Eq. 2. Slight
variation in the experimental results can be attributed due to the heterogeneity in the rock materials.

3.3.2 Radial deformation in R-S

As observed during the testing on R-S, dilation was noted in the shotcrete region and later on cracks
propagated from the shotcrete to the rock and the specimen failed simultaneously. Therefore, the
radial deformations in the shotcrete was observed to be higher than the rock. To check the
observations analytically using general stress strain equations, the radial deformation in the SFRS and
rock can be given by Eq. 3

 sr   s 
  L  ;  r      L  (3)
r r
Es Er
Where  and  represents the radial deformations in SFRS and rock specimen respectively and
r
s
r
r
s and r represent the poisson’s ratio of SFRS and rock respectively. The above Eq. 3 is simplified
to compared the radial deformations as below
s r (4)
 ;
Es   s
r r
Er   r
s 
From the experimental results; =0.008; r =0.016, which implies:
Es Er
s r (5)

Es Er
The above correlation states that the shotcrete shall deform less in radial direction as compared to
rock. Due to difference in the stiffness of the two materials, they are expected to show different
 10th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium
ARMS10 29 October to 03 November, 2018, Singapore
The ISRM International Symposium for 2018

behavior. As observed during the testing on R-S, bulging and splitting occurred in the shotcrete
because as it reached its limit of radial deformation for the same load taken by the rock. The capacity
of radial deformation in the rock was greater than shotcrete so dilation was not observed in the rock.
Therefore, first shotcrete started splitting and radial cracks were developed in it.

The experimental behavior was as expected based on the values obtain using Eq. (5). Due to the above
phenomenon stress distribution in the specimen may be affected but not significantly since the rock
was observed to be having similar cracks but not as prominent as shotcrete. Finally, the fracture
surface was observed to be connected along the interface as can be seen in Fig 5(b). However, this
behavior depends on mechanical characteristics of the rock. A rock with higher stiffness like Basalt
(Malik et al., 2017) may exhibit opposite behavior.

4. Conclusions
Following conclusions can be made on rock-shotcrete behavior from this study:
1. From the failure behavior observed in experimentation, and analytical calculations, it can be
said that the rock-shotcrete behaves as a composite material when subjected to uniform
normal stress.
2. The failure strain of SFRS with given specifications lies in the range of 0.002 to 0.003. The
additional strain taken by R-S is due to the presence of interface.
3. The young’s modulus of rock-shotcrete lies in between modulus of rock and shotcrete
determined individually. The co-relation given in Eq. (2) can be satisfactorily used to estimate
the modulus of rock-shotcrete as composite material.
4. The expression obtained in Eq. (5) can be used to understand the failure behavior of
rock-shotcrete. The values obtained from the result of current study implies that shotcrete
would starts splitting radially prior to rock, due to lower limit of radial deformation. This
depends on the mechanical characteristics of rock and can be predicted before conducting the
experiment using Eq. (5)
5. There is a scope for future work in triaxial and shear tests on the interface of rock-shotcrete.
The study can be helpful in the development of a constitutive model for rock-shotcrete (R-S) and
better understanding of R-S support system in the underground structures.

Acknowledgements
The authors are very thankful to Dr. S. Sarma, Mr. Sourabh Jain and Mr. Ankur from R&D lab of
L&T Pvt. Ltd. for their continuous help on various works for the ongoing research.

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ARMS10 29 October to 03 November, 2018, Singapore
The ISRM International Symposium for 2018

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