ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 describes the characteristics of various support elements, such as shotcrete, concrete liners, and steel ribs/sets. Support members fundamentally provide resistance against the movement of surrounding ground and/or intrusion of fluid into the open space, while reinforcement members such as rockbolts contribute to the mechanical properties of surrounding rock mass as well as restraining of ground movement into the open space. In some cases, support members may obstruct fluid flow into the surrounding medium. In other words, the support members are members separated from the surrounding ground, while the reinforcement members are an integral part of the rock mass on a macroscopic scale.
The support members are conventionally shotcrete (with/without fibers), concrete liners, steel ribs/sets, and steel liners in underground excavations. Regarding surface structures, shotcrete, steel, or reinforced concrete piles and retaining walls may be visualized as support members. Fundamentally, support members convey the loads to the stable ground if they are unclosed or internally resist the forces directly if they are closed. In this chapter, experiments on the mechanical characteristics of shotcrete and concrete liners are presented and their constitutive modeling is described.
