Experimental Study for Confirmation of Relaxation Zone in the Underground Cavity Expansion

Recently, there have been frequent occurrences of ground sink in the urban area, which have resulted in human and material damage and are accompanied by economic losses. This is caused by artificial factors such as soil loss, poor compaction, horizontal excavation due to the breakage of the aged sewage pipe, and lack of water proof at vertical excavation. The ground sink can be prevented by preliminary restoration and reinforcement through exploration, but it can be considered that it is not suitable for urgent restoration by the existing method. In this study, a model experiment was carried out to simulate the in ground cavities caused by groundwater flow for developing non-excavation urgent restoration in underground cavity and the range of the relaxation zone was estimated by detecting the around the cavity using a relaxation zone detector. In addition, disturbance region and relaxation region were separated by injecting gypsum into cavity formed in simulated ground. The shape of the underground cavity due to the groundwater flow was similar to that of the failure mode III formed in the dense relative density ground due to water pipe breakage in the previous study. It was confirmed that the relaxed region detected using the relaxation zone detector is formed in an arch shape in the cavity top. The length ratio of the relaxation region to the disturbance region in the upper part of the cavity center is 2: 1, and it can be distinguished by the difference in the decrease of the shear resistance against the external force. In other words, it was confirmed that the secondary damage should not occur in consideration of the expandability of the material used as the injecting material in the pre-repair and reinforcement, and various ground deformation states will be additionally performed through additional experiments.