“…As sedimentary rock, red sandstone is widely distributed in underground rock formations such as tunnels (roadways) surrounding rocks and coal roof slabs. With the exploitation of resources and construction of underground projects, mechanical behaviour problems associated with red sandstone have been increasing in recent years, such as rockbursts, spalling, fracture, and weakening of rock strength (Yang et al 2012(Yang et al , 2013Luo 2020;Chen et al 2021;He et al 2021;Jiang 2021;Li et al 2021;Tang et al 2021;Wang et al 2021;Xu et al 2021). Therefore, to evaluate the rockburst proneness of rock with prefabricated borehole, fine-grained brittle red sandstone specimens with different prefabricated borehole arrangements collected from Junan County, Shandong Province, China were selected for tests (Figure 2).…”