Christian Butron

A swedish grouting design concept: Hydraulic testing and selection of grout

Some grouting boreholes take no grout and some boreholes take too much, two extremes related to grouting technique, grout properties and the properties of fractures intersecting the boreholes. Successful sealing of rock and soil demands an adequate description of the system to be grouted as a basis for grouting design and selection of grouting material. The basis for this Swedish concept of grouting design is the individual fractures and the hydraulic apertures, b, of these fractures. The hydraulic aperture is an important parameter to describe the grouting behavior and is used to determine if the grout can enter the fractures, the penetrability. The hydraulic aperture also determines the penetration length in addition to grout parameters e.g. yield stress, τ0, and viscosity, μg as well as grouting pressure and time. Knowing these parameters, a proper grouting technique can be adapted. Important input for both design and performance are simple and practical tests of rock and grout and the intention of this paper is to present a testing procedure and give examples from laboratory and field experiences that the approach actually works.

A Swedish grouting design concept: Grouting with silica sol in the Nygård and Törnskog tunnels

The scope of this paper is to present two tunnel grouting design case studies where the waterproofing aimed not only to reduce the water inflow to a specified level, but to minimize the number of dripping spots by means of pre-excavation grouting. Every grouted section of around one hundred meters in both tunnels used relevant parameters from the rock and the grout material properties to develop an adequate, pre-excavation grouting design. Both tunnels, constructed in crystalline rock, used silica sol as the main grouting material and were evaluated later by means of control boreholes and dripping characterization. Control boreholes showed a decrease in the transmissivity in these sections, and the dripping characterization showed a reduction in the number of dripping spots compared to the rest of the tunnel, where this pre-excavation grouting concept was not used. This led to minimization of the number of drains used, which was clearly visible in the Nygard case, suggesting that the designs were successful and confirming that an understanding of the rock and grout properties is crucial to the design concept.