Grouting in rock cavern : a case study

As an island nation, Singapore is now facing severe land shortage for further economic developments. In view of this, the idea of underground living space has been increasingly viewed more favourably due to technological advancement in the area of geo-technology. JTC Corporation, a state owned enterprise under the Ministry of Trade and Industry has embarked on the Jurong Rock Cavern (JRC) project which is the first commercial underground rock cavern facility for storage of liquid hydrocarbons with 1.47 million m3 storage capacity. JRC is located 150m below ground and 130m beneath Bayan Basin in Jurong Island. For any underground cavern construction project, underground water seepage is a major problem that needs to be managed effectively to prevent severe project budget overrun and likely delay to the project construction programme. Although researches in the aspect of pre-excavation grouting have been studied extensively, there is still much to be learned, especially in the area of predicting the grout required for a grouting operation. As of now, there is no reliable method in quantifying the amount of grout to be used, most projects depend on engineer’s experience on grout design. Therefore in collaboration with JTC, this study will assess the impact of the variability of water ingress against the total grout volume to suggest possible relationship that might provide hint of estimating the grout volume for a pre excavation grouting operation. Actual construction data provided by JTC will be subject to regression analysis and plot using exel to facilitate the study of the relationship. This study can thus help to lay the groundwork to achieve a more reliable method of estimating the grout volume to be used for future underground tunnel or cavern projects.Bachelor of Engineering (Civil