Study on Long-Term Stability of Lined Rock Cavern for Compressed Air Energy Storage

A rock mass is mainly subjected to a high internal pressure load in the lined rock cavern (LRC) for compressed air energy storage (CAES). However, under the action of long-term cyclic loading and unloading, the mechanical properties of a rock mass will deteriorate, affecting the long-term stability of the cavern. The fissures in the rock mass will expand and generate new cracks, causing varying degrees of damage to the rock mass. Most of the existing studies are based on the test data of complete rock samples and the fissures in the rock mass are ignored. In this paper, the strain equivalence principle is used to couple the initial damage variable caused by the fissures and the fatigue damage variable of a rock mass to obtain the damage variable of a rock mass under cyclic stress. Then, based on the ANSYS 17.0 platform, the ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL) is used to program the rock mass elastic modulus evolution equation, and a calculation program of the rock mass damage model is secondarily developed. The calculation program is verified by a cyclic loading and unloading model test. It is applied to the construction project of underground LRC for CAES in Northwest China. The calculation results show that the vertical radial displacement of the rock mass is 8.39 mm after the 100th cycle, which is a little larger than the 7.53 mm after the first cycle. The plastic zone of the rock mass is enlarged by 4.71 m2, about 11.49% for 100 cycles compared to the first cycle. Our calculation results can guide the design and calculation of the LRC, which is beneficial to the promotion of the CAES technology.