Back analysis of a general rock failure in a marble quarry

Active rock bolts have been widely used to stabilize soil and slopes in civil structures. Mining is another activity field where could be seen the application of these active bolts. However, the use of bolts in mining is restricted to marble quarries due to their specific rock characteristics. In a marble quarry, as a corrective measure, were employed active rock bolts in order to stabilize a defined area belonging to that quarry. However, a rupture of the base of a bench took place. As a result of that, there was a general failure of the whole bench which affected an area of 25m high and 100m long. This proceeding focuses on the study case of this failure through the use of back analysis techniques to estimate the causes of the collapse. A FLAC3D finite difference model was implemented to investigate this quarry failure in which the complex geometry of the quarry was considered. Besides, the key role of using active rock bolts in the quarry has been evaluated to find out their actual influence on the occurrence of failure. Previously these types of studies have been covered by using numerous experimental results which were compared by matching with those data provided by numerical analysis. Nevertheless, the relevance of this work relies on the fact that the present study is based on the information gathered from the real failure event, the knowledge of the geomechanical rock properties and the rock bolt characteristics. © 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, London.