Definition
Underground open spaces or cavities may be of natural or man-made origin. Natural structures include caves, dissolution and collapse cavities in soluble rocks, cambering fissures (or gulls), open fault cavities, and lava tubes. Man-made voids include all the different types of mines, habitation, religious and storage spaces, military excavations, tunnels, and shafts.
Introduction
Voids or cavities are open spaces in ground that are commonly encountered as unforeseen ground conditions in engineering geology. In 2012 Donnelly and Culshaw proposed a method for the classification of natural and man-made voids, based on their mode of formation which was presented and published in BS5930 (2015). When voids are not foreseen in engineering geology and construction, they can pose a hazard. In tunneling and mining, they can represent an inrush, flooding, or gas explosion hazard. Where they are present on construction sites, they may result in unacceptable subsidence or collapse. In...
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References
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Cooper, A.H. (2018). Voids. In: Bobrowsky, P.T., Marker, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Engineering Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73568-9_291
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73568-9_291
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