Physical and mechanical properties of rocks exposed: To microwave irradiation: Potential application to tunnel boring
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mining companies and the market today are advancing toward faster, more efficient and productive continuous excavation within mining and civil applications. Explosives are not used in continuous excavation in hard rock formations; therefore, the interaction between mechanical rock breakage or cutter tools and the natural rock become increasingly important to understand. Rock cutter tools are highly advanced in terms of material quality, but limited in performance when they cut natural hard rocks. Comprehensive and collaborative research between McGill University and Natural Resources Canada on all possible explosive-free rock breakage techniques demonstrated that the use of microwaves in rock breakage techniques is highly advantageous and efficient. Microwave-assisted rock breakage machines, specifically tunnel boring machines or TBMs, represent a potential new avenue of rock cutting and breaking technology. This thesis research introduces the microwave-assisted TBM concept, describes the selection of the appropriate microwave wave guide applicator for the design (i.e., multi-mode vs. open ended), and quantifies the influence of microwave irradiation on temperature distributions and mechanical properties (i.e., uniaxial compressive and Brazilian tensile strength, CERCHAR abrasiveness index) of specimens of hard rock. Influencing parameters such as power level, distance from the antenna and exposure time were evaluated, as well as the physical damage that microwaves induce to the rock. Microwave irradiation with an open ended applicator was shown to heat the rock from the surface inward, when the rock is a good energy absorber. The failure mechanism (biaxial compression vs. shear failure) depended on the temperature difference inside the rock has been observed. A benchmark numerical model was developed for both types of microwave applicators, simulating the influence of microwave energy on the temperature profile under various conditions. Results of this study show that microwave-assisted rock breakage system is potentially viable in continuous hard rock excavation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".