EXCAVATIONS

Definition: It is denominated excavation to the process of analysis of the natural estratigrafas and antrpicas that settle in a certain place. The excavation process consists on removing the deposits in the inverse order to how they have left forming. For this reason it is necessary to understand in all moment during an excavation: 1. the limits and the nature of the deposits that configure the stratification; 2. the formative processes that have been given place to these deposits; 3. the order or the relative sequence with which you/they have been formed the deposits. The easiness with which the rock like the floor can be dug and to maintain the stability of a created hole this way, they will be influenced in a certain one I number of factors like: the resistance of the land, the magnitude of efforts that you/they work inside him; the geologic structure of the land; the level of the underground water and the magnitude of load of pressure to the depth, the storage of the land and their permeability.

1. Excavation of Rock and Floor. The methods but common used in the process of making a hole in the land, they are the perforations (to drill holes and wells), the polls (for bores and piles), scheme-perforator (for tunnels), explosion (to dig strong rock), the haulage for escrepa, the rasfamiento or outburst and the excavation (for the superficial excavation of the floor and of weak rock. " The success of these it depends on their capacity to break and to disintegrate the rock and the floor

a.

Perforation: Most of talados is of two types: The percusivo (a.1) and the rotational one (a.2)

a.1. Perforation Percusiva: The drill has the form of a chisel that hits against the rock until forming a hole, it pulverizes the rock until obtaining fine detrituses that can be taken out of the hole making circulate the fluid of the perforation. a.2. Rotational Perforation: The land is cut or it crushes for kitchen knives or tips which are made rotate gravitating on them a load, the hardness of the mineral constituents, the tenacity of the rock, its abrasividad and the geologic structure affect the advance of the perforations.

b. Polls, bores: A barrenador consists on a haulage drill to cut tunnels and this together to a trasportador in hairspring or of crosses. It is very efficient in soft materials as clay and it can drill holes with diameter until of 1.5 m. or more.

c. you Scheme to Perforate: You scheme them of big diameter they can be used to perforate tunnels. They are a continuation of the perforation technology and transport in the tunnels, with their cutting heads able to break and to dig the diameter (short teeth for silts, picks for weak rock and disks for strong rock)

d. Explosion: The Explosion is used with a lot of frequency to originate superficial and underground excavations in the rock and it is part of a cycle that includes the perforation of holes to house the explosive and the clearance of the flown detrituses (a lifted called activity of the product of an explosion").

e. Crawls for Escrepa, Desgarramiento or Rasgamiento and Excavation: These are technical used to remove the soft and weak material as the clay, the slime, the sand, the shale, rock intemperizada and the superficial layer of the floor.

2. control of the Underground Water. An Excavation under the surface of the underground water should either be protected against an affluence of water, or, it should be worked by technical such subacuosas as the perforation with Dredge of haulage cable or dredged. It is bigger danger of the underground water in the works of the underground it is an encounter with horizontal aquifer unexpected and press of water.

a. Flow of Underground Water: The water moves to different speeds in the land, that which depends on the trajectory of the flow. The flows through the near land to the surface move with more speed and they are those that usually feed to the springs. A line of springs is defined as the intersection of the phreatic surface

with the surface of the land for that that as he/she moves, the phreatic surface the line of springs also moves.

b. Control of Pressure: The pressure of the underground water you can control reducing the load of pressure by means of the pumping: this it is a drainage form. The load of pressure in the I deposit underlying it could be reduced under the level I criticize which begins to get up the floor in the clay sobreyacente.

c. Control of Flow: The flow of underground water stays due to the drainage stored in the terrestrial holes and to you limit them geohidrologicos that recharge from water to the land. This water can be intercepted before it reaches an excavation, that which can be achieved by its pumping of the surroundings of the excavation or for the injection of the cement with the purpose of reducing the permeability of the land.

3. Superficial excavations The superficial excavations should be stable for long periods like in the cuts of the freeways and other permanent excavations, as long as in other, I eat the production trains for example in the quarries and in many excavations made for the alone foundations they need to be stable short term.

a. Investigations: The investigations of the land, they should reveal the geology of the area that will dig and to value the resistance and permeability of the land. The slopes are influenced by the geology of the land under them for what the investigations of the land should extend but there of the limit proposed for the excavation, investigations of the land should also be made that is under the floor of the proposed excavation. The geophysical techniques can lend a considerable help especially in these investigations as for that the seismic speed of the rocks and the floors are also an indication of the easiness with which you/they can be dug. Geologic sections should also be built to make to stand out the geology and to draw maps that show the geology of the surface. The sections will show the material intemperizado and weak that covers to a relatively stronger material; of course, each one of these materials has their own angle of stability in the excavation.

b. Deformation and Rupture: The pressures of the land generally changed the difference in excavation way and if the deformation is excessive the slope or floor of the excavation can fail. An indication of the answer of the land of the valleys because these they are the natural excavations, taken place by the work of the rivers and the ice. Therefore the natural excavations indicate that the artificial slopes of an excavation will spread to move toward inside and the floor up what is named as a rebound or " rising ". The quantity of movement reflected the relationship from the horizontal effort to the vertical one in situ. A typical example is the rebound that happened in an excavation of 35 x 118 m and 38 m. of depth in silts of the Recent one. The deposits were formed of 38 m. of alluvium with lenticulas of sand, slime and clay and covering was them formed lacustrine layers of plastic montmorilonita of 12 m. of thickness. The laboratory tests indicated that as much the alluvium as the clay bounced, when being verified the discharge and, therefore, the location had to use the maquinismo. The excavation consumed 5 months and like it was predicted there was a rising, but in the superficial excavation fractures were not observed due to the plastic nature of the deposits.

c. it Dilutes underground: Two problems should be pointed out that are peculiar to the superficial excavations as the exhaustion of the near aquifers to the surface and the contamination of the underground water. Both can happen even when this controlled, and they don't represent any problem being the location in if same. The excavations act as natural drains and the pumping of the water of the deep excavations they can drain the local reservations of underground water gradually. The discharged water of the excavation can be returned to the supply of general water, but the cost of its purification is possibly bigger than the one of installing a waterproof barrier to avoid that the flow drains the local resources. The superficial layer of the floor and the horizontal intemperizados are important cleansers of the water that infiltrates in the land, because in them they lodge the species microbiolgicas that can decompose the dangerous substances in inoffensive substances. The spoil of these horizontal ones precedes to the superficial excavations and, one is eliminated, the underground water of the location becomes vulnerable to the contamination. The excavations located up or near to aquifer important they should be protected by the strict control of the location, that is to say that they should settle drenes but that blind drains and to be paid special attention to the storage of the products of the petroleum, in such a way that the filtrations or spills of these products cannot penetrate in the land. The sand or the rammed clay can be placed as temporary covers on the area of the floors that you/they are at level of their formation.

4. Underground excavations

The common underground excavations are vertical wells and horizontal galleries (or inclined shots) to have access to the works you undergrounds, to the mines for the extraction of the mineral, tunnels and extensive cameras.

a. Investigations: The difficulty of predicting in appropriate form the geologic conditions to make such works, leaving of the superficial investigations, it requires that the laboreo methods for underground excavations adapt quickly to the opposing real conditions. The areas and aquifer fractures are always potentially dangerous. The limestones are material particularly difficult of investigating if they contain solution cavities. The fissures and cavities filled with water don't have to be intersectadas for an excavation that puts them in danger. If the rock thickness that separates them of the excavation is insufficient to resist the load of pressure of the water that is exercised inside them, the rock it will break. The cavities in calcareous in the dolomas of frica of the south have discharged their content of the mud liquefied toward vertical wells and, occasionally, they have caught some workers. The tunnels present the difficulty that the vertical wells the alone intersectan in a small fraction of their total longitude. In spite of this the superficial cartography can indicate the best places to perforate wells that provide excellent information in areas that have not been perforated. The localizations of wells can be explored with reasonable success perforating the wells from the surface of the land until the total depth. The deep perforations can stray of their course and their not well interpreted geology. To compensate these deficiencies it is habit to examine the land that is up of an excavation.

b. Gases: References have already been made with respect with regard to the presence of gas in the superior levels of the terrestrial bark. The gases can be such when they are in spaces closed by an excavation. The sgtes. Gases are the main ones:

i.

ii.

Dioxide of Carbon (CO2): 1.53 times but heavy that the air and he/she accumulates in the bottom of the excavations; usually taken place by the slow oxidation of the coal and sometimes for the breakup of calcareous. Monoxide of Carbon (CO): 0.97 times the weight of the air and it can rise. It is a lot but toxic that the CO2, this accompanied one for methane and associated with carboniferous rocks. Methane (CH4): 0.55 times the weight of the air and he/she rises. Extremely mobile gas that can contaminate the strata up of their supply areas or to be transported down for the water drained toward the inferior excavations. It forms a highly explosive mixture with the well-known air as

iii.

gris in the mines of coal where he/she originates the bitmenes. It can also be in rich silts in organic matter and he/she is known with the name of gas of the swamps. Iv. I sulfurate of Hydrogen (H2S): 1.19 times the weight of the air, is highly toxic and it forms an explosive mixture with the air. It comes from the destruction of substances you organize and it is easily absorbed by the water. Other gases: Other many underground gases have been detected including dioxide of sulfur, I hydrogenate, nitrogen and I oxidize nitrous.

v.

c. Stability: When the rock or the floors and they dig the load that previously supported it is transferred to the surrounding land. Therefore, the efforts in situ change with some increment and others fall in relation to their original value. The rupture will happen if the magnitude of the resulting efforts exceeds the one that the land can sustain. d. it Supports: A correctly supported excavation avoids that the new ones that the new load conditions in the land that surrounds it cause him an excessive deformation of the dug vertical cut, or, the rupture of the surrounding land. The movement of the land toward the interior of a dug space stimulates an arqueamiento effect. This strengthens the near land to the excavation and in strong rocks the natural arch can have the enough resistance to support the circulating land: a condition that is described as " autosoportado ". This answer requires time so that it happens, that which means that there is not an unique value for the pressure of the land and that the answer will happen but quickly in some locations that in other, that which depends on the resistance of the land, of its internal effort and in the size and way of the excavation.

e. Effects at land level: The underground excavations that are not completely invariably supported they drive to a sinking in the land. The deformations implied generally have components of the horizontal and vertical movement and they can damage to the buildings, they change the permeability of the land and they increase the areas subject to flood that are adjacent to the rivers. The well stratified deposits of acceptable resistance can work like a support vigueta that it can contain the area of broken rock, but a dangerous situation can be developed if the separation of the strata approaches to the surface of the land and it interferes with the foundations of the buildings or with the land where buildings will be built. Where the continuous land breaking under the efforts that are too big so that it can support them a front of broken rock, he/she will move toward the surface of the land. This is described as a collapse and it can be in the sudden appearance of holes in the surface. The underground drainage to the excavations can bring the consolidation of comprehensible silts and an establishment as a result even when the silts can be up at a considerable distance or far from the excavation.

When you limit them natural, such as flaws and dikes, they don't exist. The superficial extension of the sinking this controlled mainly by the haulage Angle." In the strata of the carboniferous one of England the angle is usually among 35 38. In Holland where the carboniferous one this place setting for rocks but weak that the one that is in England, the angle is of around 45. The rupture angle defines a rupture surface that unites areas of deformations maximum tensor.

5. Disposition Of the Dug Material a. Estimate of the additional volume b. superficial Disposition