Influence of Radial Stress Gradient on Strainbursts: An Experimental Study

Strainbursts, which are violent disasters that are accompanied by the ejection failure of rocks, usually occur in hard brittle rocks around highly stressed underground openings. The release of the radial stress at excavation boundaries is one of the major inducing factors for strainbursts in tunnels. After excavation, the radial stress usually exhibits different but apparent gradient variations along the radial direction near the boundary within a certain depth under different in situ stress conditions. In this study, the influence of the radial stress gradient on strainbursts of granite was investigated using an improved true-triaxial rockburst testing system, which was equipped with an acoustic emission monitoring system. The stress state and boundary conditions (i.e., one face free, other faces loaded and increasing tangential stress) of the representative rock element in the vicinity of the excavation boundary were simulated. High-speed cameras were used to capture the ejection failure processes during strainbursts, and the kinetic energy of ejected fragments was quantitatively estimated by analyzing the recorded videos. The experimental results indicate that with an increasing radial stress gradient, the strength increases, the apparent yield platform prior to the peak stress on the stress–strain curves decreases, the failure mode changes from strainburst characterized by tensile splitting to strainburst characterized by shear rupture, and the kinetic energy of ejected fragments during strainbursts significantly increases.