THE EFFECT OF PROFILE ON ROCKBOLT PERFORMANCE

Brendan J OBrien

This project was conducted in order to increase the level of understanding of the behaviour
and design principles of the fully encapsulated rock bolt, specifically the effect of rib angle
on rock bolt performance. There is very little literature on the topic even though it is
considered to be one of the major governing factors on rock bolt system performance.

Bolts were designed with rib angles from 20 to 70 at 10 intervals. The bolts were set
with mix and pour resin in a high strength mortar mix supplied by Celtite. After the bolts
were set they were pulled out with displacement being measured at corresponding loads.
Testing was conducted at the U.N.S.W. rockbolt testing facility.

Most of the bolts failed on the resin-rock interface yielding inconsistent results. The
combination of Predebons (2000) results and this data set demonstrate that if the bolt fails
on the rockbolt-resin interface then the maximum load yielded is independent of profile.
Further to this, a trend of increasing stiffness and residual load with decreasing rib angle
was observed for the resin-rock failure mode.

It is recommended that further work on the effect of profile on rockbolt performance

proceed with the aim of achieving failure on the rockbolt-resin interface. Bolt design could
be examined with the aim of inducing failure on this interface.