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Monitoring and prediction of rockburst remain to be worldwide challenges in geotechnical engineering. In hydropower, transportation and other engineering fields in China, more deep, long and large tunnels have been under construction in recent years and underground caverns are more evidently featured by “long, large, deep and in group”, which bring in many problems associated with rock mechanics problems at great depth, especially rockburst. Rockbursts lead to damages to not only underground structures and equipments but also personnel safety. It has been a major technical bottleneck in future deep underground engineering in China. In this paper, compared with earthquake prediction, the feasibility in principle of monitoring and prediction of rockbursts is discussed, considering the source zones, development cycle and scale. The authors think the feasibility of rockburst prediction can be understood in three aspects: (1) the heterogeneity of rock is the main reason for the existence of rockburst precursors; (2) deformation localization is the intrinsic cause of rockburst; and (3) the interaction between target rock mass and its surrounding rock mass is the external cause of rockburst. As an engineering practice, the application of microseismic monitoring techniques during tunnel construction of Jinping II Hydropower Station was reported. It is found that precursory microcracking exists prior to most rockbursts, which could be captured by the microseismic monitoring system. The stress concentration is evident near structural discontinuities (such as faults or joints), which shall be the focus of rockburst monitoring. It is concluded that, by integrating the microseismic monitoring and the rock failure process simulation, the feasibility of rockburst prediction is expected to be enhanced.
Tang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.