Zonal disintegration of rock mass around an underground excavation

In focus is mathematical modeling of zonal disintegration of rocks around a deep-level excavation. In the framework of the elastic model of isotropic material, the author analyzes the two-dimensional case of stress field in rocks around a circular cross-section excavation. The effective compressive stresses at infinity depend on the depth of the excavation occurrence. The shear stress analysis has shown that in rocks around the excavation, the increased shear stress circle zone appears at the distance from the excavation center. The increased stresses come before the rock mass disintegration and create conditions for next destruction circles. The author dwells on probable influence of initial hydrostatic stress on the disintegration law. In modeling, the zonal disintegration circles appear at larger distance from the excavation center than in the experiment, due to the idealization of the classical problem formulations in rock mechanics.