Stress determination by back-analysis of excavation-induced stress changes — a case study

Summary

An Underground Research Laboratory (URL) has been constructed by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) to study various aspects of disposing of nuclear fuel waste in the Canadian Shield. In order to ensure good quality and long life of the construction, one important factor to be considered is the in situ stress field. As part of the research program, stress changes have been measured during the advance of a tunnel to monitor the stress response to excavation. It is desirable to estimate the state of in situ stress from these stress change measurements and to compare the results with overcoring data. This paper describes the application of a recently developed stress change fitting technique for stress determination. The basic principle and the fitting procedure are briefly summarized and the back-analysis process for the data collected at the URL is presented in detail. A boundary element model was used to predict the stress changes as required by the fitting approach. This new method of in situ stress determination was successfully applied in this case. The back-analyzed stresses agree very well with those determined from overcoring tests. The quality of individual measurements was assessed and the required minimum number of measurements for a conclusive data interpretation is evaluated.