News Release

Virginia Tech mining engineer wins CAREER award to develop a practical method for predicting failures in rock masses

Grant and Award Announcement

Virginia Tech

(Blacksburg, Va., Feb. 11, 2002) -- With a $375,000 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a Virginia Tech researcher is attempting to give engineers the ability to scan rock for stresses and failures with the same technology that physicians use to scan the human body for medical problems.

Erik Westman, assistant professor of mining and minerals engineering (MinE) at Virginia Tech, has won a five-year NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award to develop a practical method for predicting failures in rock masses. CAREER awards are presented annually to a select roster of young faculty nationwide who have the potential to make significant contributions to engineering research and instruction.

The ultimate goal of Westman’s project is fewer fatalities, lower construction costs, and improved environmental protection in the construction and operation of mines, bridges, tunnels, dams, underground buildings, and waste repositories.

Westman is adapting tomographic imaging — the same technology used in medical CAT scans — so that it can be used by engineers in the field to monitor redistribution of stresses within rock masses. Tomographic imaging "looks inside" a mass by transferring energy in the form of acoustic or seismic waves from one boundary to another. "In the case of rock mechanics," Westman explains, "the waves are transferred from one side of a rock mass to another or from a borehole to the interior of a mine."

Tomographic imaging is a nondestructive testing method, similar to those already used on a limited scale by engineers to find stresses and predict failures in large structures such as airplane bodies, Westman said. "It’s more difficult to obtain useful images in rock, which is more massive and where changes in stress and material type occur naturally and frequently," he notes.

Scientists have done some testing of tomographic imaging on rocks in laboratory settings. Westman plans to advance the technology from the lab to the field, so that images of large rock masses can be successfully scanned. His investigation will be conducted in labs at Virginia Tech and the Pittsburgh Research Lab of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Westman will test his results in coal mines.

"NSF is interested in several applications for this technology, such as monitoring hazardous and nuclear waste repositories, dam and bridge abutments, and tunnels," Westman says. Tomographic imaging also could be used by mining engineers to detect potential rock bursts, events in which pressure causes rock in underground mines to spontaneously explode. Another potential use is the periodic imaging of fault lines associated with earthquakes, to help geologists predict fault failure.

Westman’s CAREER project also has an educational component. "Right now," he says, "we can simulate the loading of a rock mass on a computer. This research will make it real. Our undergraduate and graduate students will be able to use images of real rock masses to study stresses and failures." In addition to employing the tomographic imaging in MinE courses in the future, Westman and colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder will create a website so that the technology can be used by students at both schools.

Westman began his work with tomographic imaging as an engineer with the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Colorado from 1991 to 1996. Since coming to Virginia Tech in 1997 as a doctoral candidate, he has conducted two other projects of importance to mining engineering. With sponsorship from the Powell River Project, he completed a comprehensive survey of the economically mineable coal reserves in Southwest Virginia. The U.S. Department of Energy is funding Westman’s development of an array of seismic sensors that can be mounted in vertical and horizontal mine boreholes to improve exploration accuracy and reduce energy consumption during the mining cycle.

Westman earned his bachelor’s in geophysical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines, his master’s in civil engineering from the University of Colorado at Denver, and his doctorate in mining engineering from Virginia Tech.

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PR Contact: Liz Crumbley 540-231-9772 or lcrumb@vt.edu


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