Design studies of caverns in alpine saliniferous rock

In the last few years a lot of design studies were carried out in commission of the Austrian salt mining industry. As the alpine saliniferous rock, which belongs to the category of soft rocks, is very inhomogenous a wide range of laboratory tests including about 200 short-term and long-term tests had to be done at first. The long term studies including uniaxial and triaxial tests lasted between one and three months. Having determined the material parameters analytical and numerical studies followed. The numerical studies consisted of two-dimensional, axisymmetric and three dimensional models. For simulating the long term behaviour of rock salt the routine CREEP which is fix incorporated in ABAQUS was used. The results of the studies led to both the optimized dimensions of the pillars between the caverns and the necessary height of the remaining rock from one mining horizont to the other.