Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 28 (2012) 345349

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Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology

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Technical note

Back analysis of grouted rock bolt pullout strength parameters from eld tests
Bin Li a,, Taiyue Qi a, Wang Zhengzheng b, Longwei Yang c
a

School of Civil Engineering, Southwest Jiao Tong University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610031, PR China
School of Civil Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning 116024, PR China
c
China Railway Erju Co. Ltd., Chengdu, Sichuan 610031, PR China
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 24 February 2011
Received in revised form 5 October 2011
Accepted 17 November 2011
Available online 10 December 2011
Keywords:
Rock bolt
Ultimate pullout capacity
Bond cohesive strength
Friction angle
Dichotomy

a b s t r a c t
This paper focuses on the grout cohesive strength and the grout friction angle of rock bolt, which have a
signicant inuence on the pullout force and are difcult to estimate. Traditional method estimate the
two parameters from the results of pull-out test conducted under different conning pressures. St. John
and Van Dillen gave two approximate empirical formulas in 1984. In this text, a new method was proposed to back calculate the grout cohesive strength and the grout friction angle based on given eld pullout force of rock bolt. In order to verify the method, a numerical model was built by FLAC3D to approach
the two parameters by the principle of dichotomy. The convergence result had been proved to be right by
numerical pull-out tests.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Rock bolts have been used widely in many kinds of engineering
for a long time. The ultimate pullout capacity determined in eld
pull-out tests is the most important parameter of rock bolt.
There have been numerous theoretical studies that address ultimate pullout capacity and the application of rock bolt. For example, Kilic et al. (2002) investigated the effects of the mechanical
properties of grouting materials on the pull-out load capacity of
a fully grouted bolt. Merield and Smith (2010) presented the ultimate uplift capacity of multi-plate strip anchors in undrained clay.
Li and Stillborg (1999) developed three analytical models to
describe the mechanical coupling at the interface between the bolt
and the grout medium for grouted bolts. Cai et al. (2004) established an analytical model to predict axial load in grouted rock bolt
for soft rock tunneling.
In contrast, determination of rock bolt pullout strength parameters (i.e., grout cohesive strength and the grout friction angle)
attracts much less attention. Although St. John and Van Dillen
(1984) gave some formulas about the grout properties, described
in great details in the users manual of FLAC3D, grout friction angle
is not considered in their formula. In addition, the only strength
parameters considered in their formula (i.e., cohesive strength) is
not easy to be determined accurately, as it is highly related to
the quality of the bond between the grout and rock.

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: phdlibin@foxmail.com (L. Bin).
0886-7798/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tust.2011.11.004

However, grout cohesive strength and the grout friction angle

are two key input parameters to determine ultimate pullout capacity of rock bolt when carrying out numerical analysis.
The idealization of grouted-cable system is illustrated in Fig. 1
and key input parameters of rock bolt or grout are showed as
follows:
(1) Grout mass density q (optional needed if dynamic mode or
gravity is active) (kg/m3).
(2) Youngs modulus of rock bolt, E (GPa).
(3) Grout cohesive strength (force) per unit length, cg (MPa).
(4) Grout friction angle, ug ().
(5) Grout stiffness per unit length, kg (N/m2).
(6) Grout exposed perimeter, pg (m).
(7) Cross-sectional area of rock bolt, A (m2).
(8) Compressive yield strength (force) of rock bolt, Fc (N).
(9) Tensile yield strength (force) of rock bolt, Ft (N).
Since the shear resistance parameters of the interface between
grout and rock and the interface between grout and cable are not
described in FLAC3D, we only discuss the shear resistance parameters of the grouting material in this paper.
The area, modulus and yield strength of the cable are usually
readily available from handbooks, manufacturers specications,
etc. The grout properties are more difcult to estimate. The grout
annulus is assumed to behave as an elastic-perfectly plastic solid.
As a result of relative shear displacement ut, between the tendon
surface and the borehole surface, the shear force, Ft, mobilized
per length of cable is related to the grout stiffness, kg.

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L. Bin et al. / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 28 (2012) 345349

Fig. 3. Shear-strength criterion (Itasca Consulting Group, Inc., 2005).

Fig. 1. Idealization of grouted-cable system.

Hence, the maximum shear force per length of rock bolt is given
Usually, kg can be either measured directly from laboratory
pull-out tests. Alternatively, the stiffness can be calculated from
a numerical estimate for the elastic shear stress, sG, obtained from
an equation describing the shear stress at the grout/rock interface
(St. John and Van Dillen, 1984):

sG

G
Du

D=2 t ln1 2t=D

where Du = relative displacement between the element and the

surrounding material; G = grout shear modulus; D = reinforcing
diameter; and t = annulus thickness.
Consequently, the grout shear stiffness, kg is simply given by

kg 2pG= ln1 2t=D

As a result, the shear force Ft (Fig. 2) is given by

F t kg ut

The maximum shear force per cable length in the grout is determined by the relation illustrated in Fig. 3. The values for bond
cohesive strength, cg, and friction angle, ug , can be estimated from
the results of pull-out test conducted under different conning
pressures or, should such results not be available, the maximum
force per length may be approximated from the peak shear
strength (St. John and Van Dillen, 1984):

speak sI Q B

where sI is approximately one-half of the uniaxial compressive

strength of the weaker of the rock and grout, and QB is the quality
of the bond between the grout and rock (QB = 1 for perfect bonding).
Neglecting frictional connement effects, cg may then be
obtained from

cg pD 2tspeak

Fig. 2. Shear force/length versus relative shear displacement, us (Itasca Consulting

Group, Inc., 2005).

by

jF max
j=L cg rm pg tanug
s

2. A new method for back calculating strength parameters of

rock bolt
Grout cohesive strength and grout friction angle could be
deduced from pull-out test, which may be time consuming and
not economic. In addition, the measured results may not be reliable
as the accuracy of the results is affected by all kinds of factors in
model test.
The formula given by St. John is an approximate formula.
Besides, the value of cohesive strength is relevant to the quality
of the bond between the grout and rock, which is almost impossible to conrm. Furthermore, St. John had not given a formula to
estimate the grout friction angle.
To address these problems, a new method is proposed to determine the two strength parameters of rock bolt.
Field pull-out tests are very universal in the application of rock
bolt. In these tests, ultimate pullout capacity can be conrmed. The
ultimate pullout capacity is specied by Ft in this paper.
The grouting pressure has a signicant inuence on rock bolt,
for example, quality of the bond between the grout and rock, the
compaction rate of grout which causes difference parameters of
grout. All of the above factors can lead to difference ultimate pullout capacity. However, the grouting pressure is not important to
the back analysis of shear resistance parameters, so it will not be
discussed in this paper.
When researches are carried out on the anchor effect conducted
by calculation software such as FLAC3D, the grout cohesive strength
and the grout friction angle are indispensable, rather than the ultimate pullout capacity. Consequently, a program was written by
FISH, the built-in language of FLAC3D, to approach the inputted
eld pullout force by varying the grout cohesive strength and the
grout friction angel based on the principle of dichotomy. The theory of the program is very similar to FEM Strength Reduction
Method (Grifths and Lane, 1999; Dawson et al., 1999). A nal convergence is achieved when the difference between the computed
and targeted pullout force is less than a pre-dened tolerancevalue and the two strength parameters will be outputted.
It should be pointed out that the back calculated grout cohesive
strength and the grout friction angle by the program are merely
possible to be the real parameters of the grout, but they are corresponding to the targeted ultimate pullout force of rock bolt. So the
back calculated strength parameters may serve as relatively reasonable input parameters in other relevant numerical analyses.
Fig. 4 shows three ways to back calculate strength parameters
of rock bolt. Line 3 back calculates both the grout cohesive strength
and the grout friction angle. In Line 4, only grout cohesive strength

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L. Bin et al. / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 28 (2012) 345349

changed by the principle of dichotomy in the program. These

two parameters can also expressed by their initial value (c0g1 ; c0g2 ,
u0g1 , u0g2 ) as:

cg 0:5  cg1 0:5  cg2

nc0g1 1  nc0g2

ug 0:5  ug1 0:5  ug2

nu0g1 1  nu0g2

Fig. 4. Shear-strength criterion for convergence.

is back calculated based on giving a determinate grout friction

angle (ranging from 20 to 60); Line 1 neglects frictional connement effects (friction angle is set to be 0), and only takes the cohesive connement effects into consideration.
Line 2 in Fig. 4 represents the actual relationship between the
conning pressure and pulling force per meter of rock bolt. The line
is xed by conducting pull-out test under different conning pressures (at least two kinds of conning pressures). The intercept and
slope of the line represents the grout cohesive strength and
tangent of the grout friction angle, respectively.
Regardless of which kind of way was chosen, the same pullout
force will be obtained from line one to line four under the same
conning pressure. The ow chart of the back analysis program
is illustrated in Fig. 5.
In the back analysis, the grout cohesive strength and the grout
friction angle are varied based on the principle of dichotomy. Each
numerical run gives a different combination of grout cohesive
strength and the grout friction angle and hence a pullout force of
rock bolt. The program will keep running till the difference
between the computed and the targeted pullout force is smaller
than a given allowable tolerance.
Ft is the pullout force from eld pull-out test and F0 is the pullout force from numerical simulation by using the grout cohesive
strength cg and the grout friction angle ug. The grout cohesive
strength cg is the average value of the lower limit cg1 and the upper
limit cg2, while the grout friction angle ug is the average value of
ug1 and ug2. The initial value of cg1, cg2, ug1 and ug2 (c0g1 ; c0g2 , u0g1 ,
u0g2 ) will be set by programmer at the beginning. The lower limit
and the upper limit of these two strength parameters will be

The allowable tolerance between Ft and F0 was denoted by d. It

is well recognized that a smaller d value means a more accurate
result, but longer computational time is required to achieve the
convergence.
The cohesive strength cg and the friction angle ug used in the
numerical simulation will be the target value when the difference
between Ft and F0 is less than allowable tolerance d, otherwise, the
dichotomy will be applied to change cg1, cg2, ug1, ug2 and update cg
and ug. Hence, a new pullout force F0 will be acquired in numerical
simulation by using the updated parameters, and a new comparison between Ft and F0 will be conducted again. The cycle will not
stop until the difference between Ft and F0 is less than d.

3. Example
A numerical model was built in FLAC3D to implement out idea.
Fig. 6 shows the three dimensional mesh of the nite difference
method. The dimension of the model is 3 m  10 m  3 m. In the

Fig. 6. Numerical simulation model.

Table 1
Parameters of rock.
Deformation
modulus E (GPa)

Poisson
ratio l

Mass density c
(kN/m3)

Cohesion c
(MPa)

Friction
angle u ()

4.66

0.34

23.00

1.0

33

Table 2
Parameters of rock bolt.

Fig. 5. Block diagram of the back analysis program.

Youngs
modulus
E (GPa)

Cohesion
c (MPa)

Grout
stiffness
per unit
length kg
(GPa)

Tensile
yield
strength
(kN)

Friction
angle u
()

D
(mm)

t
(mm)

25

Undened

0.78

250

Undened

64

13

L. Bin et al. / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 28 (2012) 345349

Pulling force (KN)

Cohesive strength (104)

348

Number of cycles

Calculation steps (1103)

Fig. 9. Variation of the grout cohesive strength.

Fig. 7. Initial numerical pull-out test.

as Ft. The relationship between pulling force of rock bolt and calculation steps is illustrated in Fig. 8. It can be seen that the ultimate
pullout capacity varies from 255.14 kN to 215.07 kN after 11 cycles. The difference between Ft and F0 is about 0.07 kN, which is
less than the given allowable tolerance 0.1 kN.
The data in Table 3 present the variation progress of parameters
based on the principle of dichotomy and the result of Fig. 9 (series
1) and Fig. 10 (series 1) indicate that the grout cohesive strength
varied from 5e4 Pa to 2.29e4 Pa, while the grout friction angle varied from 45 to 20.61 after 11 cycles. The nal grout cohesive
strength 2.29e4 Pa and the nal grout friction angle 20.61 are
the target value.
However, 20.61 is a relatively small value as the grout friction
angle from the experience. The scope from 30 to 35 may be more
approximate. We choose 30 as the given friction angle and conduct a numerical pull-out test. The variation of the cohesive
strength is indicated in Fig. 9 series 2. The nal cohesive strength
is 2.08e4 Pa while the grout friction angle is xed 30.
We neglect frictional connement effects (friction angle is set to
be 0) and conduct another numerical test. The variation of the
cohesive strength is indicated in Fig. 9 series 3. The nal cohesive
strength is 2.68e4 Pa while the grout friction angle is xed 0.

Pulling force (KN)

numerical model, an 8 m long rock bolt was set at a depth of 5 m

below the ground surface.
In this numerical analysis, the rock is modeled by an elastoplastic model with MohrCoulomb failure criterion. The parameters of rock and rock bolt are summarized in Tables 1 and 2,
respectively.
The initial lower limit and upper limit of the grout cohesive
strength are set to be 0 Pa and 1e5 Pa, while the initial lower limit
and the upper limit of the grout friction angle are set to be 0 and
90. Hence the two initial parameters used in numerical pull-out
tests are 5e4 Pa and 45 respectively.
The value of the allowable tolerance (d) in this research is set to
be 0.1 kN, which is far less than the pullout force.
By adopting the two initial parameters, a numerical pull-out
test was conducted, and the relationship between pulling force
and calculation steps is illustrated in Fig. 7.
As expected, the pulling force of rock bolt increases with calculation steps. The pulling force stops increasing when it reaches
255.14 kN. This value is taken as the ultimate pullout capacity of
rock bolt.
The value of the ultimate pullout capacity from eld pull-out
test is assumed to be 215 kN, which was inputted into the program

Calculation steps (1103)

Fig. 8. Back analysis progress of the grout cohesive strength and the grout friction angle.

Table 3
Variation of parameters based on the principle of dichotomy.
Cycle

cg1 (kPa)

cg2 (kPa)

ug1 ()

ug2 ()

(1  n)

cg (kPa)

ug ()

Ft (kN)

F0 (kN)

Ft  F0 (kN)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

0.00
0.00
0.00
12.50
18.75
21.88
21.88
22.66
22.66
22.85
22.85

100.00
50.00
25.00
25.00
25.00
25.00
23.44
23.44
23.05
23.05
22.95

0.00
0.00
0.00
11.25
16.88
19.69
19.69
20.39
20.39
20.57
20.57

90.00
45.00
22.50
22.50
22.50
22.50
21.09
21.09
20.74
20.74
20.65

0.5000
0.7500
0.8750
0.8125
0.7813
0.7656
0.7734
0.7695
0.7715
0.7705
0.7710

0.5000
0.2500
0.1250
0.1875
0.2188
0.2344
0.2266
0.2305
0.2285
0.2295
0.2290

50.00
25.00
12.50
18.75
21.88
23.44
22.66
23.05
22.85
22.95
22.90

45.00
22.50
11.25
16.88
19.69
21.09
20.39
20.74
20.57
20.65
20.61

255.14
235.10
116.84
175.70
205.31
220.18
212.74
216.46
214.60
215.53
215.07

215.00
215.00
215.00
215.00
215.00
215.00
215.00
215.00
215.00
215.00
215.00

40.14
20.10
98.16
39.30
9.69
5.18
2.26
1.46
0.40
0.53
0.07

L. Bin et al. / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 28 (2012) 345349

349

Friction angle ()

relationship between pulling force and calculation steps of rock

bolt was illustrated in Fig. 11.
The nal numerical pullout forces by adopting the three groups
of parameters are 215.07 kN, 215.00 kN and 214.90 kN, respectively. Furthermore, the process curves of the three numerical
pull-out tests are almost identical. These results prove the validity
of the three methods and the outputted grout cohesive strength
and the grout friction angle can be used to instead the real value
in numerical simulation.
5. Conclusion

Number of cycles

Pulling force (KN)

Fig. 10. Variation of the grout friction angle.

In this study, a new method is proposed to back calculate the

grout cohesive strength and grout friction angle based on a given
pullout force of rock bolt. The back calculated value is not the real
value, but the numerical pullout force will be the same as the eld
pullout force by adopting it. Therefore, the back calculated strength
parameters can be used to instead the real value in other relevant
numerical analyses.
References

Calculation steps (1103)

Fig. 11. Verication numerical pull-out test.

4. Verication
To verify the correctness of the program, the three groups of
outputted data were adopted in the numerical pull-out test. The

Cai, Y., Esaki, T., Jiang, Y.J., 2004. An analytical model to predict axial load in grouted
rock bolt for soft rock tunnelling. Tunnelling and Underground Space
Technology 19 (6), 607618.
Dawson, E.M., Roth, W.H., Drescher, A., 1999. Slope stability analysis by strength
reduction. Geotechnique 49 (6), 835840.
Grifths, D.V., Lane, P.A., 1999. Slope stability analysis by nite elements.
Geotechnique 49 (3), 387403.
Itasca Consulting Group, Inc., 2005. Users Manual of FLAC3D (Structural Elements),
pp. 6170.
Kilic, A., Yasar, E., Celik, 2002. Effect of grout properties on the pull-out load capacity
of fully grouted rock bolt. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 17
(4), 355362.
Li, C., Stillborg, B., 1999. Analytical models for rock bolts. International Journal of
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