Application of Microseismic Monitoring Technique in Hydroelectric Projects

Slope instability and landslides have been always one of the most significant subjects of slope engineering, and also one of the hottest and most difficult topics in geotechnical engineering research all over the world. How to effectively predict and control slope failure hazards and ensure safety of these engineering projects is a significant task that people often probe. Recently, with the rapid and sustainable development of China’ economy, mines proceed to ever greater depth and into more and more complex geological settings. Meanwhile, civil engineering projects, particularly large hydroelectric projects (e.g. WestEast power transmission) in southwest China, are being advanced at greater buried-depths. These projects are challenged by violent rock mass failure processes due to deep cracks and faults, high stress levels, loose rockmass with low wave velocity, intense weathering, interlayer extrusion zones and unloading fissures etc. As we know, extensive use of measurement technology, such as GPS (Global Positioning System), SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) Interferometry, TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer), multiple position extensometers, convergence meters and surface subsidence monitoring, is currently found to be very useful in surface deformation monitoring of slopes. However, it is unrealistic for them to effectively monitor the occurrence of micro-fractures in deep rock masses prior to the formation of a macroscopic rock fracture outside slope surface. With regard to rock slope, these internal micro-fractures may often lead to macroscopic instability of slope. Consequently, there must be an intrinsical correlation between rock slope macro-instability and its internal micro-fractures (i.e., microseismicity). It is well known that rocks loaded in testing machine and rockmasses that are stressed near underground excavations emit detectable acoustic or seismic signals. If these signals can be captured sufficiently clearly as seismograms by a number of sensors nearby, the origin time of seismic events, its location, another source parameter such as source radius, static stress drop, dynamic stress drop and apparent stress can be estimated (Cai and Kaiser, 2005; Mendecki, 1997). Microseismic monitoring techniques have been thus employed to locate damage in order to identify and delineate the potential hazardous regions in rock engineering practice, which would provide early warning of rock slope instability.