Engineering geological rock mass characterisation of granitic gneisses based on seismic in-situ measurements

Abstract

For deep underground excavations, the prediction of locations of small-scale geotechnical hazardous structures such as faults is nearly impossible when exploration is restricted to surface based methods. Therefore, for many base tunnels, exploration ahead of the advancing tunnel face is an essential component of the excavation plan. This PhD thesis aims at improving the technology for geological interpretations of seismic data, collected in underground excavations. For that purpose GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam carried out a series of seismic measurements along the 2600 m long and up to 1400 m deep Faido access tunnel, an adit to the 57 km long Gotthard base tunnel in Switzerland.