A marble open pit quarry in carrara: An enhanced and integrated monitoring system of rock mass static conditions

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the case history of an enhanced and integrated monitoring system in an open pit marble quarry in Carrara (Italy). The current marble production comes from the more and more improved cutting technologies that have been applied since the 1970s, leading to large excavations, both open pit and underground, than can quickly reach impressive and unusual shapes. This is the context where in the last few years some specific studies have been developed and implemented, most of them taking into account the rock mass static conditions or a single sliding block identified by a specific stability evaluation code (e.g. Key block theory by Goodman and Shi (Goodman RE, ShiGH (1985) Block theory and its application to rock engineering. Prentice Hall Inc., London, pp 338pp)). The paper shows a traditional monitoring system made up of several vibrating wire transducers implemented by an innovative georadar survey system. A preliminary comparison between the experimental results coming from the two methods has been described. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.