Experimental Investigation of the Mechanical Behavior of Bedded Rocks and Its Implication for High Sidewall Caverns

The stability of high sidewalls of large-span underground powerhouses will be a major issue when the cavern axis forms a small angle to the steeply inclined rock strata. A synthetic test scheme composed of four experiments was performed on two rocks with clear bedding features, aiming at better understanding the otherwise confusing deformation behavior and failure patterns of bedded rocks. Bedding orientations with respect to stress direction impose significant effect on the mechanical behavior of bedded rocks. Excessive tensile strain is observed in the direction perpendicular to bedding or across material interface in uniaxial test. Under low confinement in true triaxial test, the σ ₂ angle mainly influences the deformation and fracture propagation but not strength. Deformation dependence of bedded rocks on two stress paths is thoroughly investigated. Confining pressure unloading leads to pronounced volumetric dilation accompanied by moduli drop. Samples with large bedding angle exhibit more obvious lateral dilation. Post-peak degradation of deformation parameters is confirmed by cyclic test. Fractures entirely or partly along bedding occurred under different stress states depend not only on the bonding strength between beds but on the anisotropic deformation field. Based on these observations, it is deduced that the possible reasons for the failure of steeply dipping rock mass after excavation are a combination of (1) the pervasive bedding planes, (2) the more pronounced deformation normal to bedding, and (3) the excavation-induced unloading of confinement.