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The paper was published in the proceedings of the 12th

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in Wellington, New Zealand, 22-25 February 2015.
 Rock mesh application in highly fractured basalt rock cutting in
Western Ring Road widening project Melbourne – A case study
B. C. Lee1, MIEAust, CPEng, and B. W. Ims1, MICE, C.Eng
1
Douglas Partners Pty Ltd, 231 Normanby Road, PO Box 5051, South Melbourne 3205; PH (+613) 9673 3500;
FAX (+613) 9673 3599; email: [email protected]; [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Widening of Melbourne’s M80 Western Ring Road carriageway required a significant vertical rock cut
leading to a new fill embankment for the Moonee Ponds Creek crossing. The rock comprised highly
fractured and variably weathered Newer Volcanics basalt. Excavation in other sections of the project
in similar fractured basalt had led to significant overbreak. For a conventional concrete faced soil nail
solution, similar overbreak in this rock cut was considered to create an appreciable budget overrun not
only due to the additional volume of concrete required to fill in the overbreak, but also for the additional
steel volume in the nails to support the weight of the thicker concrete facing. To overcome this, a
combined rock nail and rock mesh retention system was adopted where a composite action provided
restraint for both global and local face stability. Detailed assessment was necessary to determine the
interaction between the local rock mesh facing support and the global support afforded by the nails
and considerable effort was made to develop an installation procedure allowing construction of the
system to be undertaken safely and efficiently. The final rock nail/rock mesh solution minimised the
amount of steel and concrete required to support the rock giving a more sustainable solution than
originally proposed.

The construction of the rock cut involved the installation of about 400 rock nails and was completed in
2 months at the end of 2011.

Keywords: rock mesh, Newer Volcanics basalt, rock mass, rock nail, face stability, global stability

1 INTRODUCTION

The Western Ring Road (M80) was constructed in stages between West Gate Freeway/ Princes
Highway and Greensborough starting in 1989 before being completed in 1997. The section between
the Tullamarine Freeway and Sydney Road included a battered rock slope leading towards a bridge
over Moonee Ponds Creek and was completed in 1992. Traffic growth soon resulted in this section of
road becoming a bottleneck and widening of this road section by adding 4 eastbound lanes to the
north of the alignment (Figure 1) commenced in 2009. This required cutting into the toe of an existing
17 m high 2H:1V batter slope creating a 300 m long vertical rock face of up to 9 m in height with the
upper batter remaining untouched. The finished cut is faced by precast fascia panels which also
provide the necessary safety barrier at the crest.

This upgrade project was undertaken between 2009 and 2012 under an Alliance partnership between
VicRoads, Thiess, Parsons Brinckerhoff and Hyder Consulting (the TullaSydney Alliance). Douglas
Partners (DP) was requested to provide geotechnical design services to the Alliance.
 New vertical cut

BH-WZ30/18

A
BH-WZ30/19

Original M80 batter

slope toe line
A’

Figure 1. New vertical rock cut and site investigations

2 GEOLOGY AND ROCK MASS CONDITION

2.1 Newer Volcanics

Extensive investigation that mainly consisted of core drilling and exploratory dozer trenches and
seismic refraction survey was carried out for the original construction in 1990 with additional work
undertaken by the Alliance in 2010. The investigations showed that the new cutting would be mostly
within highly weathered basalt as could be observed on the original M80 batters.

Highly weathered
basalt zone

Moonee
Ponds
Creek
Gradeline

Figure 2. Geological longitudinal Section A-A’ showing extent of highly weathered basalt

2.2 Rock Mass Condition

The various investigations showed the basalt to be mainly highly weathered with some moderately to
slightly weathered basalt in places. The rock mass is highly fractured and consisted of columnar
jointing in several basalt flows with closely spaced sub-horizontal bedding and occasional conjugated
30˚ to 60˚ joints forming a blocky structure ranging in size from 0.01 to 0.3 m3. The joints were mostly
described as being Limonite coated (iron staining), clay coated (smeared) or clay infilled. Some tight
and clean joints were also recorded in the boreholes. The joint surfaces were mainly described as
either planar and smooth or irregular and rough. The low dipping joints were usually oblique in their
dip direction, and the joints were usually curved. Based on this, their persistency was judged as likely
to be limited to a few metres. The reported Rock Quality Designation (RQD) values were low with an
average RQD for basalt more weathered than ‘moderately weathered’ of less than 10%. The average
RQD for the moderately or less weathered basalt was below 50%.

The strength of basalt varied depending upon the weathering condition. Point Load Strength Index
(PLI) test results showed Is(50) values of between 0.25 and 4.8 MPa.

3 CONSTRUCTION CONCERNS AND SOLUTION

Prior to the commencement of the design work, the Project construction team had major concern over
the concrete faced rock nail face stabilisation method adopted in earlier but smaller cuttings in similar
rock conditions where the conventional reinforced concrete facing (shotcrete) was used to provide
face stability and had experienced significant overbreak during excavation. The overbreak had not
only required additional volumes shotcrete above those anticipated but also additional steel nails to
support the weight of the shotcrete until a suitable footing could be established at the base of the wall.
The construction team envisaged that similar problems in this large cut would cause appreciable
budget and time overruns. To overcome this concern, a composite rock nail/flexible rock mesh
solution was proposed and subsequently selected by the Alliance.

4 DESIGN PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY

The borehole data indicated that the basalt rock mass to be highly fractured and therefore its global
behaviour more likely to be controlled by ‘soil’ type mechanisms (i.e. circular slips and face instability).
In addition to the global stability, a local surficial sliding wedge failure of the cut face could be formed
due to disturbance during the excavation through detachment of rock joints and undercutting.

4.1 Design Philosophy

The design philosophy adopted was to address the two design concerns (global and face stability)
using a single composite retention system. Since the primary global failure mode was identified from
the prevailing rock mass conditions as a circular slip failure, the design approach was to first validate
the adopted design parameters by evaluating the stability of the existing cut batter and then assessing
whether the new cut required stabilisation. Where the new cut did not meet the satisfactory long term
factor of safety stabilisation measures in the form of the soil/rock nail system were then adopted.

To obtain appropriate face stability, a flexible rock mesh facing was adopted with the nails acting as
support for this face retention system. The adoption of the flexible mesh would allow the anticipated
uneven rock face to be followed more closely thereby eliminating the need for an undefinable quantity
of shotcrete facing as would be required for a rigid mesh.

As the excavation progresses, stress relief movements would lead to the development of nail head
forces requiring such forces to be included in the bar capacity assessment in conjunction with the pre-
stressing requirements of the facing mesh.

The spacing of the support nails was defined by the strength of the nail bar under the combined
loading of the axial force (i.e. that required to tension the mesh and that developed by the stress relief)
and the shear developed by the weight of the sliding blocks of face material transmitted through the
mesh. For a given nail spacing, the shearing capacity of the face retention is defined by the need to
retain the sliding block and break-out resistance of the mesh pinned by nail against wedge shape
sliding block. In addition, the axial force in the nail would generate a face load that the facing would
need to handle.

Whilst there are several suppliers of rock mesh retention systems, the system supplied by Geobrugg
was adopted for the project. The mesh system comprises a high tensile steel mesh TECCO 65/3 with
a yield stress of 1700 MPa draped over the rock face and held in place by a system of ‘spike’ plates
with a staggered bolt pattern (see Figure 3). A geofabric was placed behind the mesh to control the
potential for small fragments to pass through the mesh.
 Cross
beam

Fascia
panel
Rock
Mesh

Figure 3. Rock mesh and nail pattern

4.2 Design Methodology

The commercial software program Slope/W (Ver. 2007) was used to perform the numerical global
stability calculations. Potential circular failure surfaces were generated using Morgenstern and Price’s
Simplified Method of Slices. Additional analyses were carried out using the program STARES
(University of Sydney). This program employs the modified Bishop method and more easily allowed
study of the effects of the limited head restraint that existed with the mesh facing.

For the face stability, the Ruvolum program developed by the mesh supplier was used. The program
considers the shallow face failure between the nails (or mesh holding bolts) using a similar failure
mechanism assumption to that of wedge theory. Independent assessment was also made to evaluate
both circular and wedge failure mechanisms using STARES and force limiting-equilibrium method
respectively.

5 DESIGN

5.1 Design Parameters

The adopted rock mass strength parameters were an effective cohesion (c') of 20 kPa and a friction
angle (') of 40˚ based on the General Hoek-Brown failure criterion using the Geological Strength
Index (GSI) system (Marinos and Hoek, 2000) for the prevailing rock mass conditions. An ultimate
ground-grout adhesion of 200 kPa was used for the nails. A friction angle of 35˚ was adopted for the
surficial disturbed rock mass zone in analysing the face retention. The thickness (t ) of the disturbed
rock mass zone was assumed to be 1 m based on the field observations and sensitivity studies.

5.2 Primary Stabilisation - Rock Nails

The global stability analyses in terms of circular slip failure indicated that the rock cut required 8 m
long, 28 mm diameter 500 MPa yield stress bars installed in 125 mm diameter dry drilled holes on a
2 m x 2 m vertical and horizontal grid (see Figure 3). A maximum nail head force in the order of 100
kN was estimated.
Figure 4. Global stability analysis for 30B cut of highly fractured rock mass

5.3 Face Retention - Rock Mesh System

The face instability involves the superficial slope-parallel slip failure surfaces. The stabilisation
treatment system adopted is an active stabilisation approach using high tensile steel rock mesh to
retain the disturbed rock mass pinned and secured by the rock nails. The stability of the rock mesh
and bolt system requires checking of the bar capacity of rock bolt in shear due to the sliding body
(Figure 5a) and break-out of the mesh at the interface with the nails (Figure 5b) due to the force from a
wedge shaped sliding body between individual nails (Roduner et al, 2010).

Figure 5a. Forces acting on sliding body Figure 5b. Sliding of wedged shape body and
‘two-body’ mechanism

5.3.1 Nail Bar Shear Capacity – Sliding Force

The resultant shear force acting on the bar shared by a single bar is generated from a sliding body
with a thickness (t ) against the base of stable zone (Figure 5a). The shear force (Sd ) can be
estimated by:

ᴪ sin ᴪ (1)

where G is the weight of the sliding body, V is the nail pretension force, c’ is the cohesion, A is the
base contact area, α is the slope angle, ᴪ is the nail inclination angle and is the friction angle of the
disturbed rock mass.

5.3.2 Mesh/Nail Capacity – Wedge Break-out Force

For a single wedge shaped sliding mechanism (Figure 5b), the break-out force (Pd ) at the intersection
between the mesh and the nail can be determined from:
 (2)
ᴪ ᴪ

where is the angle of the sliding wedge and Z is the frictional force from the rock mesh against the
sliding body.

A two-body sliding mechanism where upper sliding body imposing an active pressure against the
lower sliding wedge (Figure 5b) was also considered in the assessment. The contact force (X ) from
the upper body onto the lower wedge shaped body is:

(3)

The break-out force (Pd ) on the lower wedge shaped body due to the contact force from the upper
body is:

(4)
ᴪ ᴪ

The larger Pd force from both mechanisms would be the most critical case.

5.3.3 Results

The most critical load component of the steel mesh system was found to be the shear force imposed
on the bar due to the parallel sliding body rather than the break-out force as shown in Figures 6a and
6b.

For the sliding force (Sd ) of a body associated with a 2 m grid and a disturbed rock mass thickness of
1 m, the 28 mm nail bar was found to be satisfactory in terms of shear capacity (Figure 6a). The
break-out force (Pd ) was found to reach a maximum when the thickness of sliding body (t) was 0.6 m.

mesh

(mesh)

Figure 6a. Forces acting on sliding body Figure 6b. Sliding of wedged shape body

In order to allow a head force to be developed and to retain the mesh, a head plate is required to bear
against the batter face. Whilst the mesh supplier recommended for the retention bolt to be tensioned
to between 30 kN and 50 kN the additional loads developed due to mass movement of the slope
during excavation the head plates were designed for a head force of 150 kN.

6 CONSTRUCTION

Considerable effort was put into construction staging to minimise the need for working at height and
the associated risks. As the final face was to be covered by the precast architectural panels, a support
beam was needed at the crest of the cut as a fixing point and it was used to provide an upper fixing
point for the mesh (Figure 7a). By constructing this beam when the excavation cut was about 1 m
deep, it was possible to roll up the mesh and hang it from the beam and subsequently unrolling the
mesh and attaching it to the face progressively at the cut deepened.

The full excavation and installation of about 400 nails and the mesh was completed in 8 working
weeks using an average of 2 drill rigs at one time (Figure 7b).

Top beam Survey Prism

1st row nails

Figure 7a. Top beam with rock mesh secured and Figure 7b. Final excavation level
pinned with a geotextile underlay

Wall displacement was monitored at the top of the wall (Figure 7a) from the commencement of
construction primarily for construction control. The maximum measured displacement was recorded
as 10 mm or less than about 0.1 % of the wall height which was well within the expected limits.

Testing by pull-out tests on 6 sacrificial nails and proof tests on 2% of the production nails were
carried out prior and during the construction respectively.

7 CONCLUSIONS

The application of the combined rock mesh/nail system was found to be suitable for the highly
fractured rock mass conditions and the anticipated failure modes. The rock mesh system for face
retention of fractured rock mass was successfully integrated into the primary stabilisation using rock
nails for global stability. Implementation of the rock mesh presented a safer working environment than
would be for a more conventional shotcrete faced wall by eliminating the need for large areas of
unsupported rock face prior to shotcrete application. Careful preplanning developed a construction
strategy that eliminated the need for expensive working at height safety measures.

8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank Thiess for the permission to publish this paper and their initiative to support
innovative construction technique.

REFERENCES

Marinos and Hoek (2000), “GSI: A Geologically Friendly Tool for Rock Mass Strength Estimation”. Proc of the
GeoEng2000 at the International Conference on Geotechnical and Geological Engineering, Melbourne.
Roduner, A., Ruegger, R. and Flum, D. (2010). “The dimensioning and application of the flexible slope
stabilization system TECCO made from high-tensile steel wire mesh in combination with nailing and
anchoring in soil and rock”, in GeoBrugg technical manual.