Abstract

Waterjet has been comprehensively used in urban areas owing to a suitable technique for cutting concrete and rock, and low noise and vibration. Recently, the abrasive waterjet technique has been adopted and applied by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute to demolish concrete plugging without disturbing and damagingIn-situ Demonstration of Engineered Barrier System in the disposal research tunnel. In this study, the use of abrasive waterjet in the tunnel was evaluated for practical applicability and the existing cutting model was compared with the experimental results. As a variable for waterjet cutting, multi-cutting, water flow rate, abrasive flow rate, and standoff distance were selected for the diversity of analysis. As regarding the practical application, the waterjet facilitated path selection for cutting the concrete plugging and prevented additional disturbances in the periphery. The pump’s noiseat idling was 64.9 dB which is satisfied with the noise regulatory standard, but it exceeded the standard at ejection to air and target concrete because the experiment was performed in the tunnel space. The experimental result showed that the error betweenthe predicted and measured cutting volume was 12~13% for the first cut and 16% for second cut. The standoff distance had a significant influence on the cutting depth and width, and the error tended to decrease with decrement of standoff distance.