Excavation of the Aica-Mules pilot tunnel for the Brenner base tunnel: information gained on water inflows in tunnels in granitic massifs

Perello, Paolo; Baietto, Alessandro; Burger, Ulrich; Skuk, Stefan

doi:10.1007/s00603-013-0480-x

Cited by 31 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Altogether, 18 articles were found that deal with hard rock hydrogeology in the Austrian Alps or adjacent regions. While five articles focus on hydraulic aspects of groundwater flow in fractures (Untersweg and Schwendt 1996;Fasching et al 2010;Winkler et al 2010;Perello et al 2013) or methodology (e.g. Reichl et al 2001), 12 studies were found that use abiotic groundwater components (major and trace elements or water isotopes) to interpret flow systems.…”

Section: Central Gneiss Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

Review: Natural tracers in fractured hard-rock aquifers in the Austrian part of the Eastern Alps—previous approaches and future perspectives for hydrogeology in mountain regions

Hilberg

2016

Hydrogeol J

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Extensive in-depth research is required for the implementation of natural tracer approaches to hydrogeological investigation to be feasible in mountainous regions. This review considers the application of hydrochemical and biotic parameters in mountain regions over the past few decades with particular reference to the Austrian Alps, as an example for alpine-type mountain belts. A brief introduction to Austria's hydrogeological arrangement is given to show the significance of fractured hard-rock aquifers for hydrogeological science as well as for water supply purposes. A literature search showed that research concerning fractured hard-rock aquifers in Austria is clearly underrepresented to date, especially when taking the abundance of this aquifer type and the significance of this topic into consideration. The application of abiotic natural tracers (hydrochemical and isotope parameters) is discussed generally and by means of examples from the Austrian Alps. The potential of biotic tracers (microbiota and meiofauna) is elucidated. It is shown that the meiofauna approach to investigating fractured aquifers has not yet been applied in the reviewed region, nor worldwide. Two examples of new approaches in mountainous fractured aquifers are introduced:(1) use of CO 2 partial pressure and calcite saturation of spring water to reconstruct catchments and flow dynamics (abiotic approach), and, (2) consideration of hard-rock aquifers as habitats to reconstruct aquifer conditions (biotic approach).

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Section: Central Gneiss Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

Review: Natural tracers in fractured hard-rock aquifers in the Austrian part of the Eastern Alps—previous approaches and future perspectives for hydrogeology in mountain regions

Hilberg

2016

Hydrogeol J

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“…At present, there are three types of methods used for this assessment: empirical or theoretical methods (Aberg, 1977;Goodall et al, 1998;SINOPEC, 2008), numerical methods (Kim et al, 2007;Sun and Zhao, 2010;Yu et al, 2013;Li et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2015aWang et al, , 2015b and experimental methods (Rehbinder et al, 1988;Lindblom, 1989;Cesano et al, 2000;Li et al, 2009;Perello et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2015c). Aberg (1977) conjectured that if the vertical hydraulic gradient around a storage cavern is greater than unity, then the stored petroleum gas will not leak through the surrounding host rock mass.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…They reported that more than 90% of the groundwater inflow is related to primary geologic features such as faults, dikes and open fractures. Perello et al (2014) measured the time-dependent groundwater inflow rates into a pilot tunnel in granitic massifs during and after tunnel excavation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing containment properties of underground oil storage caverns: methods and a case study

Qiao

Wang

et al. 2017

Geosci J

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One of the most important issues in the construction of underground water-sealed oil storage caverns is the assessment of their containment properties. These properties depend on the hydrogeological condition and also engineering characteristics of the caverns. Conceptual hydrogeological model for assessing the containment properties of underground water-sealed oil storage caverns was developed. Empirical, numerical and experimental methods for assessing the containment properties were summarized. A principle for the selection of assessment methods was proposed for engineering application. It was proposed that the selected assessment method should be appropriate for the investigation stages, the research objectives and the parameters which have been determined. A five-stage flowchart for the assessment of containment properties of underground water-sealed oil storage caverns was developed. The set of assessment methods was applied to a pilot underground water-sealed oil storage facility in China. Empirical methods, fracture network method and field test methods were presented for the assessment of the containment properties of the cavern, while the other methods were introduced in previous studies.

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“…Although a large number of borehole packer tests were performed during site characterization, erroneous estimation of the rock permeability may still occur due to improper layout of the test boreholes in the rock units and improper consideration of the anisotropic nature of the tested rocks (Coli and Pinzani 2014;Nilsen 2014). The inverse modeling approaches become an alternative effective tool for reassessment of the rock permeability using the field observations obtained by the groundwater monitoring system (Garzonio et al 2014;Perello et al 2014). In hydrology or hydrogeology, numerous inverse models (e.g., Neuman 1973;Woodbury and Ulrych 2000;Valstar et al 2004) have been proposed using various optimization techniques (e.g., Karpouzos et al 2001;Rao et al 2003;Gill et al 2006) for back calculations of the aquifer parameters with an acceptable computational cost.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, quite a number of the models (e.g., Yang et al 2004;Garcia and Shigidi 2006;Hernandez et al 2006;Virbulis et al 2013) assumed steady-state flow conditions for the inverse calculations, disregarding the transient nature of groundwater flow induced by fluctuation of the reservoir water level and change of the boundary condition. To improve the reliability of the inverse solution and better address the nonuniqueness problem, therefore, transient flow models are preferable for the back calculations (e.g., Alcolea et al 2006;Bastani et al 2010;Dai et al 2010;Perello et al 2014;Zhou et al 2015), in which both the hydraulic head and discharge time series measurements are utilized for the construction of a couple of the objective functions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Groundwater Leakage into a Drainage Tunnel in Jinping-I Arch Dam Foundation in Southwestern China: A Case Study

et al. 2015

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The Jinping-I double-curvature arch dam, located in the middle reach of Yalong River and with a maximum height of 305 m, is the world's highest dam of this type that has been completed. Since the second stage of reservoir impounding, after which the reservoir water level was gradually raised by about 232 m, a significant amount of leakage was observed from the drainage holes drilled in the lowest drainage tunnel at the left bank abutment at an elevation of 1595 m a.s.l. (above sea level), with an observed maximum pressure of about 0.3 MPa. A number of investigations, including water quality analysis, digital borehole imaging, tunnel geological mapping, and in situ groundwater monitoring, were performed to examine the source of leaking, the groundwater flow paths, and the performance of the grouting curtains. By defining two objective functions using the in situ time series measurements of flow rate and hydraulic head, respectively, a multiobjective inverse modeling procedure was proposed to evaluate the permeability of the foundation rocks that was underestimated in the design stage. This procedure takes advantage of the orthogonal design, finite element forward modeling of the transient groundwater flow, artificial neural network, and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm, hence significantly reducing the computational cost and improving the reliability of the inversed results. The geological structures that lead to the leakage were identified and the seepage flow behaviors in the dam foundation and the left bank abutment were assessed. Based on the field measurements and the inverse modeling results, the effects of the engineering treatments of the leakage event on the dam safety were analyzed. It has been demonstrated that the seepage control system is effective in lowering the groundwater level and limiting the amount of seepage in the dam foundation, and the leakage event does not pose a threat to the safety of the dam.

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Excavation of the Aica-Mules pilot tunnel for the Brenner base tunnel: information gained on water inflows in tunnels in granitic massifs

Cited by 31 publications

References 11 publications

Review: Natural tracers in fractured hard-rock aquifers in the Austrian part of the Eastern Alps—previous approaches and future perspectives for hydrogeology in mountain regions

Review: Natural tracers in fractured hard-rock aquifers in the Austrian part of the Eastern Alps—previous approaches and future perspectives for hydrogeology in mountain regions

Assessing containment properties of underground oil storage caverns: methods and a case study

Evaluation of Groundwater Leakage into a Drainage Tunnel in Jinping-I Arch Dam Foundation in Southwestern China: A Case Study

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