A Study on Field Testing Methods for the Shotcrete Quality Control of Large Underground Spaces

It is well known that shotcrete is the most important support member for the construction of large underground spaces. Generally, the strength of the field shotcrete is heavily dependent on the field mixing and spraying conditions so that it is different from the strength of the shotcrete mixed in laboratories. As a support member, the early strength of shotcrete unlike concrete is very important to the initial stabilization of the underground spaces. Therefore, the field methods to efficiently test the early strength of shotcrete have been highly required. This paper aimed to verify the pneumatic pin penetration test and the point load test for measuring the early strength of the field shotcrete. As a result of the experiments through a series of uniaxial compression, pin penetration, and point load tests for the range of the early shotcrete strength, two equations to estimate reliably the uniaxial compressive strength by the pin penetration and the point load tests were acquired.