Developments in Shotcrete in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia in April 2001. One of the outstanding papers presented at the Conference was a paper by Grant, Ratcliffe and Papworth on œDesign Guidelines for the use of SFRS in Ground Support. Frank Papworth was asked to submit an updated paper on the subject for publication in the ASA Shotcrete Magazine and so here it is. It is more technical than most of the papers published in the ASA Shotcrete Magazine, but was selected because it was considered that it would be of considerable value to designers of fiber-reinforced shotcrete linings for ground support in civil and mining applications.
Abstract: There are presently no design guide-lines based on toughness for the use of fiber-reinforced shotcrete (FRS) in ground support for underground mine development. Typically, in the Australian mining environment, the approach to the use of FRS has been one of borrowing experiences from other mines and a œtrial-and-error method of design, installation, and assessment. There is a need for a ground support design guide that can be simply applied by œfront-line personnel.
This paper provides an overview of the performance characteristics of FRS and how the various shotcrete guides specify its use. Practical experiences with the use of FRS in Australia and Canada in various applications and ground conditions are combined with existing empirically based ground support-design methods to develop a ground support guideline that incorporates the concept of toughness. An assessment of structural synthetic fibers shows that their low modulus makes their performance characteristics different from those of steel fibers, and that they are not likely to be economical in linings where crack widths are limited, but that they are preferable where large deflections are permissible.
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Fiber-reinforced shotcrete (FRS) has been used successfully for ground support for more than