A review of ground support mesh testing around the world

Abstract

As mines around the world get deeper and the stresses around the excavations increase, the occurrence of large damaging seismic events (often called rockbursts) become more commonplace. One of the most favoured controls used in the industry to reduce damage from large seismic events is the implementation of a ground support system. Such a system typically comprises bolts or cables and surface support, such as shotcrete, mesh or screen, and straps.It is important to test all components of a dynamic ground support system, but there is a lack of useful testing done for surface support. Reviews and discussions of test results sourced from different test facilities show a wide scatter of energy absorption and deformation capacity. This, on top of concerns with testing setups, makes the consideration of surface support in support designs very difficult.In this paper, we discuss the current surface support testing results for mesh, and comment on whether current testing practices are producing useful metrics for geotechnical design.