Worldwide Sprayed Concrete: State-of-the-Art Report

Dr. Gustav Bracher, Sika Schweiz AG, STM (*)

1. Abstract This paper is regarded as an introduction to the second day of the International symposium on Waterproofing for Underground Structures 2005 in Sao Paulo (Brazil), as an overview of worldwide shotcrete technology, like warming up before going to gymnastics. It covers the whole development from the history to the presence. Most of the annual consumption of approximately 10 mio m3 applied shotcrete is for underground support work, for rock- and soil consolidation. Therefore the main emphasis of this article will be focussed on shotcrete technology for tunnelling. Here one of the most important parameters is the strength development, mainly the Early Strength behaviour, using suitable accelerators. A detailed discussion of Early Strength measurements is included. An ITA (International Tunnelling Association) working group (WG 12) has been active since 1989 with annual meetings during the ITA congress with the main task to describe the worldwide practice and define future trends of shotcrete technology. Key words: shotcrete, sprayed concrete, dry process, wet process, thin stream, dense stream, superplasticiser, stabiliser, accelerator, durability, single shell tunnelling method, sulphate resistance, Early Strength measurement, steel fibres, structural polymer fibres, shotcrete on hard rock TBMs, 2. Introduction Shotcrete has become an important component of modern tunneling technology, underground mining, slope- and rock consolidation, repair of concrete structures and artificial rock structures.

Figure 1: Ecological Parc, Vietnam: dry process shotcrete with alkali-free powder accelerator The annual consumption of worldwide applied shotcrete can only be estimated, but is definitely in the range of 10 millions m3 The rapid technological development that we have seen during the last 20 years is quite impressive: Dry process has been replaced by he wet process, and actually the dominant conveyance is by dense stream, using suitable shotcrete pumps. The wet process by thin stream as well is rapidly disappearing due to high wear costs with the introduction of steel fibers in shotcrete. Modern shotcrete is applied with robotic arms, either assembled on the spraying rig, or as separate self driving manipulators. This together with the introduction of steel fiber reinforced shotcrete for tunnel support has the advantage, that no personnel has to be anymore under unsupported ground or rock, and a >30% reduction in time of rock support installation could be achieved.

(*): Dr. Gustav Bracher, Sika Schweiz AG, Phone: +41/56 649 32 57, Mobile: +41/79 357 29 89 E-Mail: bracher.gustav@ch.sika.com

Figure 2: From History to actual tunnel sites: Metro Sao Paulo Line2 (Brazil) and Gotthard Base tunnel (Switzerland) Switzerland always has been the pioneer country regarding the development of sprayed concrete, with only one exception, that the first applications and patents are coming from the States. To understand this development, it is justified to go back into History of tunnelling construction, where again Switzerland plays a dominant role with the construction of the Alpine tunnels. Sprayed concrete replaced wooden timber support and originally was used as a temporary support, and with the development of new accelerators it was possible to change with modern sprayed concrete technology to permanent support, using the single shell tunnelling method with one single shotcrete lining including a permanent rock bolt and drainage system. Traditionally, the performance of sprayed concrete has been a compromise between early strength and final quality, flexibility, practicality and economics. This is particularly so in overhead applications, where very early setting is required in order to achieve early shotcrete strengths for support and a satisfactory thickness of shotcrete in one or several succeeding passes of the nozzle, also under nasty rock- or soil conditions and in the presence of water. In the wet process the output capacities of sprayed concrete have constantly been increased, requesting for better and more reactive shotcrete accelerators. Early setting has been achieved in the past by the addition of accelerators, based upon alkali silicates or aluminates, at the spraying nozzle. Unfortunately, both of these types of chemicals are detrimental to the ultimate strength of the shotcrete. A more worrying aspect, however, has been the Health, Safety and Environmental hazards created by the use of these highly alkaline materials. In the past few years, much attention has been focused on the development of alkali-free accelerators for shotcrete in order to eliminate the above mentioned hazards, as well as the potentials for alkali-aggregate reactions. Alkali free accelerators is the clear trend for the shotcrete of today and tomorrow. The indicator for this is, that Italian contractors outside of Italy start to spray with alkali-free accelerators, although in Italy almost all the shotcrete is accelerated with waterglass. The same is true for the Japanese contractors working outside of Japan, while in Japan the most common accelerators are still cement based powder accelerators.

Figure 3: Wet process shotcrete with alkali-free liquid accelerators at the Karahnjukar Project (Iceland) with Italian contractor Impregilo and at the Hai Van Pas tunnel project (Vietnam) with Japanese contractor Hazama

3. ITA, WG12: Shotcrete for Rock Support The International Tunnelling Association (ITA) Working Group 12 on Shotcrete Use was formed in Toronto in 1989 with the animator Tomas Franzen from SveBeFo, Stokholm, followed by Knut Garshol from Degussa, and during the last ITA-05 congress in Istanbul Prof. Tarcisio Celestino from THEMAG Engenharia, Sao Paulo took over the lead of WG12. The Groups first task was to issue a status report on shotcrete technology in different countries. A comprehensive report on national codes, standards, guidelines and recommendations was ready end of 1992 covering 15 countries. With the rapid development within several aspects of shotcrete technology the WG12 meeting held in Durban in 2000, decided to produce a new State of the Art report to supplement the now more than 10 years old first reports. The main aspects to cover under the above heading are: Temporary and permanent tunnel linnings Method of reinforcement Method of application: including type of equipment, manipulators, accelerator dosage systems, concrete batching and transport, accessories like nozzles, compressors, hoses, etc. Materials technology: All concrete components including accelerators, admixtures, and additives with concrete property parameters achieved from batching through to the hardened state. Information regarding shotcrete durability. Nozzle men certification procedure Codes and standards: Which specification documents are being used, are there new under development, experience made, comments about suitability and suggested improvements. Design: rock and shotcrete interaction, established limitations of usage . An overview report on synthetic structural fibres for shotcrete has to be prepared. It was decided to carry out a test programme to check and extend the results under controlled conditions. Synthetic structural fibres have been promoted at international conferences during the past years. The members of WG12 are very much interested to support this testing programme and to get the necessary Know How to promote structural polymer fibre reinforced shotcrete.

Figure 4: Toughness testing of macro-synthetic fibre reinforced shotcrete(5kg/m3) giving similar results as for high quality steel fibre reinforced shotcrete (35kg/m3) The test programme is expected to start in October 2005, using the facilities of the testing gallery Hagerbach, Switzerland, where the complete infrastructure is available to carry out this type of 1:1 scale tests. The preliminary report is expected for the WG meeting at ITA 06 in Seoul. The fibre suppliers will cover the cost of the testing programme. A proposal was made to increase the frequency of working group meetings. Most of the members feel that meeting only once a year is not enough. A tentative WG meeting has been scheduled for the occasion of tests for the evaluation of shotcrete reinforcing fibres. Possibility of a post-conference meeting in ITA 06 Seoul is also open. Another possibility is a meeting during the Shotcrete conference scheduled for September 2006 in Whistler Creek, Canada.

4. Equipment It is now no longer possible to talk of shotcrete or concrete additives without consideration at the same time of the pumping and shotcrete equipment, and the same is true in reverse. Application and development of shotcrete equipment cannot take place in isolation, separated from simultaneous concern and development of additives.
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Figure 5: Pumpability testing for optimisation of shotcrete superplasticiser using measuring technology This has been a reality in the industry for some time and most of the major admixture producers have developed their own range of shotcrete equipment . Sikas long term association with, and subsequent take over of, the Aliva range of shotcrete equipment from the ever popular dry mix rotor pumps, to accurate dosing units, efficient nozzle and boom technology and integrated mobile robot units has been highly successful. Development of a wet mix pump however was a more complex undertaking. Finally, through a series of unsuccessful partnerships with other wet mix pump manufacturers, Sika has established an alliance with leading concrete pump manufacturer Putzmeister. Rather than competing with each other, the Sika, Aliva, Putzmeister alliance, to cover all essential components of modern, high production, high quality wet mix shotcrete application is a powerful combination, that will serve the needs of the industry with the best available in the three specialized but inseparable categories .

Figure 6: Sika-Putzmeister alliance: resulting in newly developed spraying equipment for wet process Due to the introduction of the hard rock TBMs mechanically automatic spraying systems from the Back Up of the TBMs are getting more and more common. This development started with the Vereina tunnel project in Switzerland for wet process shotcrete and the Manapouri project in New Zealand with an in situ produced dry mix with all the components and a simple manipulator. Today only wet mixes are used anymore.

Figure 6: Shotcrete on theBack Up of the hard rock TBM: from Manapouri (New Zealand) with in-situproduced dry mix shotcrete to the TBE highway project Uetliberg tunnel (Switzerland) with a 360 o robot and the hydrel project San Francisco (Ecuador) 5. Admixtures for Shotcrete The clear development over recent years in shotcrete additive technology is the introduction and advance of alkali-free accelerators. Replacing the caustic aluminate-based accelerators is now a requirement not only in developed high-tech countries but also in low-tech developing countries. Such aluminate-based accelerators, unless handled very carefully, caused severe skin burns and blindness if splashed into the eyes. They were also caustic to the environment and markedly increased the alkalinity of the concrete causing alkali reaction deterioration of the shotcrete lining with time, but they were very fast reacting within the first half hour at low dosages. It was the search to produce an alkali-free accelerator with comparable properties that drove research. Today there are two generations of alkali-free accelerator the first are less expensive products but these can prove more expensive in the long run through the need for high dosage rates and a higher rebound rate due to slower reaction times. The second generation products are more expensive but provide higher early strengths, use lower dosages and therefore can save time and money in the long run. Liquid alkali-free accelerators are available worldwide. Another significant consideration when choosing a shotcrete accelerator is its compatibility with superplasticisers. The development and application of specially for shotcrete designed superplacticisers do improve workability and extend the useful life of concrete has taken a high profile.

Workability

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Figure 7: Shotcrete Workability of the base mix: Workability time of the base mix has to be defined by the applicator and opitmised by the admixture supplier At present there are superplacticisers that will extend concrete mix life up to 4 hours or so, but after that two products are needed - the superplacticiser and a stabilizer to increase workable life to 6 or more hours. What we are all searching for at the moment is a single product that will do the work of both additives for longer term life without any negative effect to the strength development in the early age. Extending the life of wet mix concrete is all a function of the particular logistics of the contractor and of the job site set up, as well as a result of mixes with the quality of the cement being used and other mix ingredients. When asked to supply superplasticisers

specific site tests are performed, using local cement and aggregates, to achieve the most appropriate mix to meet the needs. Often today, contractors are making efficient use of mobile batching plants, which greatly reduce the uncertainty of delivery times through congested urban areas and the logistics of long distances from the batching plant to the tunnel site, so superplasticisers to extend life to very high numbers of hours is not now a general requirement. The bigger concern is producing a wet mix shotcrete concrete at the batching plant that is efficiently and effectively compatible with the accelerator introduced at the nozzle. An extended life of 8 to 12 hours without a relevant slump loss and using a single product is the primary wish of most contractors. 6. Fibre Reinforced Shotcrete Steel fibre reinforced shotcrete (30-40kg/m3 of high tensile strength >1200MPa, high aspect ratio >65) has been introduced during the last 20 years and belongs to the state of the art of modern shotcrete technology in wet process. References are available throughout the whole world for all major tunnels with some exceptions of hard rock TBM tunnels, where steel meshes can be erected automatically, giving an overhead protection directly after the cutter head.

Figure 8: Steel fibre reinforced Shotcrete: State-of-the-Art of most worldwide tunnelling projects One of an interesting development to occur over the last 5 years has been the promotion to use of structural synthetic fibres in shotcrete to replace steel fibres and reinforcing mesh. Data regarding performance exists still to a less extent, and as well references of key tunnelling projects are missing. It is the period of the pioneers and goodwill of the owners to start with this new technology. However, several independent studies have shown advances with synthetic macro-polypropylene fibres in recent years, reaching a structural performance adequate a reinforcement compared to steel fibres. Macro-polypropylene fibres are high strength, high modulus fibres, specially designed to improve the post crack performance. Addition rates of synthetic macro-polypropylene fibres are in the range of 5-15kg/m3 , depending on the toughness specification. These fibres have particularly found benefit in the mining industry as they can perform, better under high deformation rates compared to steel fibres. 7. Early Strength Measurements Shotcrete for tunnel support has to be sprayed in thick layers (>10cm), and therefore high early strengths are 2 required. The weight of a 10cm shotcrete layer is >235kg/m . Early strengths can be obtained by adding an accelerator at the nozzle to the sprayed concrete with a defined dosage. If the shotcrete does not stick to the wall, also in overhead application, there will be no progress of the excavation beside dangerous situation of falling down parts of shotcrete or even loose rock. Therefore the shotcrete must be pre-qualified before starting a project, mainly regarding the early strength behaviour. The easiest way is to spray panels in overhead position.

Figure 9:Early Strength Testing of Shotcrete: Defined Mix Design of the base concrete, checked dosage of the accelerator: no discussion about High Early Strength behaviour The Austrian Guidelines define three curves J1, J2 and J3 regarding strength gain of shotcrete. Shotcrete for tunnel support should always be above the J2 curve. To be able to spray thick layers of >10cm with a minimum amount of rebound, the High Early strengths in the first minutes should be very close to the J2 line.

Increase of rebound

Risk of falling down

Figure 10:Early Strength Testing of Shotcrete: The Austrian strength development ranges: J1, J2, J3 Early strengths of shotcrete can only be measured by actual spraying process with the cement, aggregates and correct dosage of the accelerator to be used on site. Do forget all the laboratory trials. It has never been possible to correlate the laboratory test results with the real shotcrete trials. The target of the pre-qualification is to show, that the shotcrete sticks on the wall in thick layers of >10cm and fulfils the requirements of strength development, specified by the project engineer

Figure 10:Early Strength Testing of Shotcrete: Visual test by spraying overhead

According to the Austrian Guidelines testing of the strength development of shotcrete can be divided into 5 different measuring ranges: Strength class (MPa) Capability of spraying thick layers: >10cm 0-1 1-8 3-16 >10 Method Visual test by spraying overhead without moving the nozzle, but keeping constant the nozzle distance Penetration needle d=3mm* Bolt driving method: HILTI 450L white cartridge** Bolt driving method: HILTI 450L green cartridge** Conventional strength measurements using drilled cores***

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Figure 11:Early Strength Testing of Shotcrete: Methods for different strength classes

*This method is used to measure the force required to push a needle with a diameter of 3mm penetrate into sprayed concrete to a depth of 1.5cm. A Proctor penetrometer according to ASTM C 403-95 or a digital measuring device. There is no need to spend too much time for calibration purposes. Normally it is sufficient to divide the measured penetration resistance (N) by 500 to get the strength (MPa) results. **Bolt screws are shot into the sprayed concrete and the depth of penetration is determined. The penetration depth is the parameter used to determine the compressive strength. Then the pull-out force is measured to remove the bolt again. The pull-out strength again is in a direct function of the compressive strength. To reduce scattering and obtain more reliable values, the ratio of pull-out force to penetration depth is calculated, and compressive strengths determined according to a relevant calibration curve. *** Cores of suitable dimensions obtained either from placed sprayed concrete (structure) or from test panels are used as test specimens for sprayed concrete. In case of drilling cores from test panels, the sprayed test panels should not be removed or transported before achieving a compressive strength of >10MPa. The test panels should have the same curing conditions as the sprayed concrete to be tested. The above described method has been approved from all the different standardisation committees, but for a contractors mentality those tests are far too academic, and many times a much easier method was looked for. Analyses the HILTI testing showed, that the scattering of the pull-out tests were much bigger than the scattering from the measured penetration resistance, which automatically leaded to the question, whether it was really necessary to do both measurements. If for a certain site 12 hours early strengths are specified to be 7MPa, a tolerance of 1MPa can easily be accepted. Within those accuracy limits the early strength testing can be limited to the determination of the penetration resistance. This simplification additionally permits that also site people and not only lab people can determine in situ strengths and react accordingly. A careful analysis was organised, using statistical results from several tunnel sites. The obtained curve was verified with a lot of calibration curves using different types of aggregates, which were provided by the Technical University of Innsbruck, and the obtained results integrated as well into the obtained calibration curve and shown in the following graph:

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 HILTI Penetration (mm) Compressive Strength (MPa) Reference Sika Aarau 0-16 Crusehed 0-8 Natural 0-16 Diabas 0-16

Figure 12:Verification of simplified HILTI testing The correlation to the calibration curves from the Technical University of Innsbruck indicate, that the proposed simplified HILTI measurements give reasonable results. Early age testing should not be used to make a PhD thesis. The accuracy of Early strength measurements (>3MPa) are accurate enough, if the obtained result are within 1MPa. The applied method with green cartridges gives only strength values >3MPa, which means, whenever the bolt does not completely disappear into the sprayed concrete, compressive strength implies to be >3MPa. Measuring the pull out strengths are quite tricky, because the direction of pulling out the bolt has to be perpendicular to the substrate and as well parallel to the bolt. Therefore the scattering of the pullout out forces is x times higher than the that from the penetration length measurements. The comparison of Early strength measurements (Standardised method versus simplified method) can easily be verified in the range of 10-20 MPa, because in this range it is possible to compare the results with direct compression tests from cores

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Figure 13: Analysis of relative standard deviation of penetration depth and pullout force from two different independent laboratories The simplified method gave much closer results compared to the actual core strengths. My personal conclusions are: Why complicated standardised Early strength measurements, when much simpler tests can give the required information? 8. Durability Design of Shotcrete Nowadays there are unnumbered underground structures in soil and in rock built by the NATM (New Austrian Tunnelling Method), using shotcrete as a temporary support, but as well many shotcrete structures with permanent shotcrete lining. Worldwide references for single shell tunnels are available. The most famous single shell tunnelling project is the 19km long Vereina tunnel near Klosters, a railway tunnel in the Swiss Alps, constructed in the early 90th . The main aspects for the monocoque construction method are: composite structure immediate rock support and lining are joined together monolithic sprayed concrete lining with good adhesion to the rock support no separation of the lining by a waterproofing membrane proper installation of drainage system high demands on durability of sprayed concrete lining (durability design: >100 years) For the construction of permanent shotcrete linings higher demands on quality and quality control have to be defined: w/c ratio <0.45, impermeability DIN 1048:penetration <20mm, compressive strength for rock support: >40MPa and for final lining: >50MPa, sulphate resistance Economical aspects (Mix Design, output capacity, rebound) have to be considered for the total cost of the project and not for the individual components. Additionally all the ecological aspects (dust, alkali-free setting accelerators, leaching) have to be respected. If we accept, that today shotcrete is sprayed concrete, and we apply the same rules as for regular concrete, durability may be defined by proper specification and quality assurance, including fresh concrete properties, rebound and hardened concrete properties. In contrast to concrete structures we will never have the chance to look backwards and analyse shotcrete structures with the aim of making it better today for the future. The two Alpine base tunnels Ltschberg and Gotthard with a total length of approximately 240km are specified with a design life of >100years. 9. Conclusions

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The main shotcrete application has become the tunnelling support, using the wet process dense stream system with appropriate workability time of a low w/c ratio concrete mix containing steel fibres. Alkali-free accelerators have now almost everywhere become state-of-the-art, and most of the shotcrete applied is by using a spraying rig with a manipulator or a ring spraying system in case of using a hard rock TBM for tunnelling excavation. Nobody wanted to believe, a couple of years backwards, how quick shotcrete technology would develop from dry process to wet process, from thin stream to dense stream and from alkaline accelerators to alkali-free accelerators. The same fast change will occur for shotcrete applications from temporary to permanent support.

Amsteg Sedrun

Faido Bodio

Figure 14: Shotcrete impressions from the Gotthard Base tunnel

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