Burgers rock creep around axisymmetric tunnels

摘要

The present paper deals with the time - dependent rock deformation during tunnelling, and more particularly, its association with the related phenomenon of creep in its viscoelastic form, as well as the numerical evaluation of it. Initially, a brief introduction of these two phenomena is provided. Then, the Burgers’ idealized model of rheological rock mass behaviour is presented and analysed, along with a short reference to the viscoelastic rock creep parameters. Afterwards, a quite extended description of the numerical models developed for this study, is made. The properties and parameters used for the numerical analyses, are given. Finally, the numerical results of the simulations performed are presented and discussed.