Rock Bolting from Past to Present in 20 Inventions

Year 2016, Issue: 9, 69 - 85, 01.01.2016

Eren Kömürlü Ayhan Kesimal

Abstract

This work aims to better understand improvements in history of the rock bolt support. Although the rock bolt was invented more than one hundred years before, its usage has increased in mining and tunneling industries since the 1930s. Then, the steel rock bolts have become one of the most widely used tunnel supports since the third quarter of the 20th century, which was a time of changing strategies regarding supports and many challenges faced concerning the use of new support materials. Twenty inventions in the rock bolt history from its start of usage to nowadays are briefly explained in this paper. It can be inferred from the listed matters in this paper that many of the important developments in the rock bolt history were because of the need for use of new materials like contemporary grout materials increasing the load bearing capacity or rock bolts made with engineering polymer materials having good resistivity against the ground water. Also, developments in the mechanical science have made rock bolting an effective support method due to improvements such in the drilling technology or new anchoring mechanisms developed to overcome the problems in rock bolting. As a result of growing applications during 20th and 21th centuries, new challenges have come into being as in the energy-absorbing rock bolts being improved for the rock burst problem since 1990s

Keywords

Rock bolts, rock bolt history, rock support, tunnelling history, material handling in rock engineering, underground support