Highlights

The authors would like to thank Michael Bonner of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for his work developing postprocessing software compatible with LDEC. This work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.

Keywords Dynamic loading, Geology, Simulation

Abstract We present the preliminary results from a parameter study investigating the stability of underground structures in response to explosion-induced strong ground motions. In practice, even the most sophisticated site characterization may lack key details regarding precise joint properties and orientations within the rock mass. Thus, in order to place bounds upon the predicted behavior of a given facility, an extensive series of simulations representing different realizations may be required. The influence of both construction parameters (reinforcement, rock bolts, liners) and geological parameters (joint stiffness, joint spacing and orientation, and tunnel diameter to block size ratio) must be considered. We discuss the distinct element method (DEM) with particular emphasis on techniques for achieving improved computational efficiency, including the handling of contact detection and approaches to parallelization. We introduce...