Dr. Rennie Kaunda form the Mining Engineering Department, Colorado School of Mines, USA, will hold a guest lecture in the framework of SFB 837 about 'Rock specific energy as a measure of performance in mechanical excavation and tunneling under mixed ground conditions'.

Tunneling projects can easily cost millions or billions of dollars. These costs can become prohibitive, especially near cities where cost overruns are likely to be borne by taxpayers due to hard rock or mixed ground conditions. The objective of this presentation is to give an overview of our recent research work at the Colorado School of Mines where we have utilized rock specific energy derived from large scale laboratory linear cutting tests, mechanical tests, and artificial neural network modeling to understand rock behavior. The presentation is given in the context of present and previous research which has been conducted at our Earth Mechanics Institute (EMI) in the department of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines for more than 40 years.

SFB_837_Gastvortrag_Kaunda.pdf