Numerical analysis of the total energy release of surrounding rocks excavated by drill-and-blast （D＆B） method and tunnel boring machine （TBM） method is presented in the paper. The stability of deep tunnels during excavation in terms of energy release is also discussed. The simulation results reveal that energy release during blasting excavation is a dynamic process. An intense dynamic effect is captured at large excavation footage. The magnitude of energy release during full-face excavation with D＆B method is higher than that with TBM method under the same conditions. The energy release rate （ERR） and speed （ERS） also have similar trends. Therefore, the rockbursts in tunnels excavated by D＆B method are frequently encountered and more intensive than those by TBM method. Since the space after tunnel face is occupied by the backup system of TBM, prevention and control of rockbursts are more difficult. Thus, rockbursts in tunnels excavated by TBM method with the same intensity are more harmful than those in tunnels by D＆B method. Reducing tunneling rate of TBM seems to be a good means to decrease ERR and risk of rockburst. The rockbursts observed during excavation of headrace tunnels at Jinping II hydropower station in West China confirm the analytical results obtained in this paper.
Rock sampling with traditional coring method would cause initial damage to rock samples induced by in-situ stress relief during coring.To solve this problem,a damage-free coring method is proposed in this paper.The proposed coring scheme is numerically modeled first,and then it is verified by comparative laboratory tests using rock samples both obtained by conventional coring method and the proposed damage-free coring method.The result indicates that the in-situ stresses in sampling area could be reduced by 30%-50% through drilling a certain number of destressing holes around the whole sampling area.The spacing between adjacent destressing holes is about 10 cm.The average uniaxial compressive strength（UCS） of rock samples obtained by the damage-free coring method in Jinping II hydropower station with overburden depth of 1 900 m is higher than that of samples obtained by the conventional coring method with the same depth by 5%-15% and an average of 8%.In addition,the effectiveness of damage-free coring method can also be verified by acoustic emission（AE） monitoring.The AE events monitored during uniaxial compression test of damage-free coring samples is fewer than that of conventional coring samples at the primarily loading phase.
