Mechanical performance of a 3D printed scaled mine roadway model

This study exploits 3D concrete printing technology to build a physical model of a mine roadway, 30 times scaled down of its engineering prototype. The supporting arches were also scaled accordingly and then manufactured by 3D metal printing. By assembling the 3D printed concrete model and metal arches, the engineering scenario was reproduced in laboratory for a monotonic increasing loading. Loading was assisted by multiple measurement techniques, namely: digital image correlation (DIC), acoustic emission (AE), strain gauges. Attention was dedicated to the damage initiation and evolution of the 3D printed components. The results highlighted the advantages of the 3D printed model to understand the collapse mechanism of the layered concrete, which involved the collapse nearby the excavation and the failure of the arches. Moreover, the hypotheses and limitations of this study were discussed with advices for future researches. Finally, engineering data from the simulated site were analyzed, and it found that the 3D printed model predicted the actual deformation characteristics of engineering prototype with reasonable accuracy.