这是一个工程实例：
ABSTRACT: A decision of the authorities of the canton of Jura in Switzerland to investigate the possibility of rehabilitating the caves of the former lime mines of Saint Ursanne as a convention and concert hall required a complete safety reassessment of the caves which is described in this paper. The age of the caves indicates that overall stability is not questionable; local instabilities are however identifiable on inspection. These local instabilities are related to weakness planes in the rock structure and indicate that chunks of rock could be mobilized in local failure mechanisms. A safety assessment study was conducted by visual inspection and numerical simulation with finite element code Z_Soil.PC, comparing results obtained using different modeling and constitutive assumptions. These analyses allowed us to identify the influence of different rock characteristics and the most critical failure mechanisms; precise rehabilitation measures could be proposed to the site owner. This paper illustrates the role that elastoplastic numerical simulations can play in a reliable safety evaluation of natural caves.
