How the Pressure Build-Up Affects the Penetration Length of Grout-New Formulation of Radial Flow of Grout Incorporating Variable Pressure

Paper in proceeding, 2017

For around two decades of research and development in the field of grouting in hard jointed rock, the design process has taken some leaps forward. Stille and Gustafson, 2005 and Funehag and Gustafson 2008, shows how a grouting design can be computed. A grouting design in hard rock can based on the penetration length of grout in rock fractures. The design comprises considerations of the fracture apertures in the rock mass, the type of grout and its rheological properties and how the grout is injected i.e pressure and grouting times. When knowing these parameters an optimized geometry fitting the design is made. Thörn, et al, 2014 describes a fundamental analysis with a comprehensive tool to retrieve the fracture distribution and aperture distribution of the fractures crossing a cored borehole. The data needed about the core is geological mapping and hydraulic section tests. In Gustafson, Claesson and Fransson, (2013) a full derivation of a radial Bingham flow in a slit is described for constant pressure. By optimizing with a specific pressure and an efficient grouting time (efficient time means the time when the pressure has reached the designed pressure) a prognosis a more realistic time consumption for grouting can be computed. However, the time it takes to reach a certain pressure is dependent on the capacity of the pump and the how large the fractures widths are. For poorly chosen pumps together with large fractures the time to reach the design pressure can be significant. The overall objective for this new formulation was to involve the grouting pressure as a variable rather than constant. A pressure build-up mimic more a realistic pumping scenario which enables better prognosis of grouting works. This paper brings up this new formulation of the radial Bingham flow with variable injection pressure in slit. The benefits of this new formulation is that it can easily be integrated in other computer programs. One program that uses this new formulation is a grouting simulator owned and developed by Edvirt AB. The simulator has been used to pedagogically demonstrate how a variable pressure and restrictions in grout flow (the pump capacity) affect the penetration length. Further, the results show that it can be used to predict suitable pump capacity to fit the coming grouting works.