Study on Catastrophic Evolution Law of Water and Mud Inrush in Water-Rich Fault Fracture Zone of Deep Buried Tunnel

Abstract

To study the evolution law of water and mud inrush disasters in the fractured zones of water-rich faults in deep buried tunnels, a self-developed 3D physical model test system was used to conduct experimental research about the evolution process. Additionally, MIDAS GTS NX 2022 version was used to analyze the evolution laws of displacement, stress, pore water pressure, and seepage flow velocity during the excavation process. The findings indicate that in the model testing, tunnel excavation caused different changes in the stress magnitude of the surrounding rock at different positions. The pore water pressure increases correspondingly with the loading water pressure at the same location. The function relationship between the relative water pressure coefficient of any point in the outburst-prevention rock mass, and the vertical distance from that point to the upper boundary of the fault, was obtained through nonlinear fitting. In numerical simulation, excavation affects the vertical displacement of the arch vault more than the arch ring, while it has a greater impact on the horizontal displacement of the arch ring compared to the arch vault. The maximum and minimum principal stresses show significant changes; the pore water pressure at each monitoring point decreases with the increase in excavation distance. The flow velocity of seepage shows a trend of first increasing and then decreasing. The research results can provide relevant references for the prevention of water and mud inrush disasters in fault areas.