Nonlinear seepage-erosion coupled water inrush model for completely weathered granite

摘要

Water inrush from completely weathered granite has presented a significant challenge for tunnel construction, suggesting the urgency and importance of revealing the water inrush mechanism. In this paper, a seepage erosion model is proposed to describe the water inrush. Assuming that completely weathered granite consists of solid grain phase, fluid phase, and fluidized grain phase, the three-phase interaction was constrained by mass balance equations, and the erosion of fluidized grains was described by a modified porosity evolution equation. The fluid flow is governed by a coupled Darcy-Brinkman/Navier-Stokes equation, which responds to the variation of the flow pattern in the evolution process. Then, the validity of the model has been proved, and the superiority has been studied by comparing with the previous models. The comparison results showed that the flow pattern has a significant impact on pore pressure, water velocity, and mutation time, and the proposed model can more accurately predict the development of velocity. Furthermore, this model was used to simulate the development of water inrush and achieved good results in predicting the direction, channel size, and whole evolution process of water inrush. The research findings from the paper can benefit tunnel engineering in the case of water inrush disasters.