The Minxian tunnel is a key engineering of the Weiyuan‐Wudu expressway that is excavated in layered jointed carbonaceous slate rock mass. During the construction process, the surrounding rocks of the tunnel encountered serious large deformations and failure, which brought about great difficulties to the safety and cost of the tunnel. In order to study the deformation and failure mechanism of the surrounding rocks, a physical model test was conducted, and integrated methods including strain gauges, a digital camera, and noncontact full‐field digital imaging correlation technique were used to record the response information of the surrounding rocks. The evolution process of surrounding rocks failure was simulated successfully in the model test, and the deformation characteristics were basically consistent with the actual engineering. The modelling results show that concentrated stresses in the surrounding rocks were very uneven due to developed stratified and jointed rock mass structure. The maximum and minimum concentrated stresses appeared at the vault of the tunnel and left of inverted arc area, and concentration factors were 3.11 and 1.98, respectively. The main forms of surrounding rocks deformation and failure were large area spalling of surface, severe circumferential fractures, serious bending deformations of thin rock layers, and collapse of overlying strata. The maximum displacements occurred at left sidewall and right shoulder of the tunnel and the corresponding actual displacements were 460 mm to 500 mm. Caving and failure took place firstly at several key positions with maximum concentrated stresses or displacements and subsequently gave rise to massive collapse of surrounding rocks.

During the excavation of the Minxian tunnel, problems of large deformations of surrounding rocks and failure of support structures appeared frequently, which caused serious influences on construction safety and costs of the tunnel. Based on laboratory analysis of mineral composition and field investigations on deformation characteristics of the surrounding rocks, the large deformation mechanism of surrounding rocks of the tunnel was considered as water‐absorbing swelling molecules of carbonaceous slate and stress‐induced asymmetric structural deformations of the surrounding rocks. The structural deformations of surrounding rocks mainly include bending deformation, interlayer sliding, and crushing failure of local rock blocks. Then, a new constant resistance and yielding support technology based on the constant resistance and large deformation (CRLD) anchor cable was proposed to control large deformations of surrounding rocks. The field tests and deformation monitoring were carried out. The monitoring results showed that compared with original support measure, the surrounding rock deformations, stresses of primary supports, and permanent lining using new support technology decreased greatly. Among them, the maximum deformation of surrounding rock was only 73 mm. The effects of field application and results of deformation monitoring showed that the new support technology can effectively control large deformations of the surrounding rocks in the Minxian tunnel.

Throughout engineering construction, large deformation disasters in soft rock tunnels are encountered increasingly frequently. Therefore, structural health monitoring not only ensures accurate construction management but also provides a basis for dynamic adjustment of the support structure. The existing monitoring technology has certain shortcomings, such as poor anti-interference ability, non-real-time operation, and great security risks. Consequently, high-precision real-time monitoring has become a key scientific issue in tunnel engineering. For this work, multisource information fusion technology was adopted, while data security reserve systems, such as cloud server (ECS) based on the fiber Bragg grating multisource sensing system, cloud database (RDS), and cloud website, were embedded into the No. 2 inclined shaft of the Muzhailing tunnel. Based on the negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR) anchor cable control technology for large deformation of the soft rock in the No. 2 inclined shaft of the Muzhailing tunnel, reasonable and effective intelligent monitoring was carried out for tunnel construction. Monitoring and early warning cloud service platforms, based on the Internet of Things and cloud technology, could quickly produce query and statistic tunnel monitoring information. The monitoring system provided the collection, transmission, storage, processing, and early warning information sending of data, such as NPR anchor cable axial force, steel arch stress, deep surrounding rock displacement, surrounding rock deformation, and contact pressure between primary support with secondary lining. This monitoring system ensured construction safety and provided monitoring application case support for the related problems of similar projects.

In this study, the deformation characteristics and mechanical properties of coal and rock mass in the S2N5 working face of the Xiaokang coal mine are analyzed to address the problem of large deformation of soft rocks with high in situ stress surrounding roadways. Through a newly developed grouting pipe, a double-shell grouting technology, consisting of low-pressure grouting and high-pressure split grouting, is proposed for the Xiaokang coal mine. In addition, the effect of grouting is evaluated by borehole peeping and deformation monitoring. The results show that the double-shell grouting technology can effectively improve the overall mechanical properties of the surrounding coal and rock mass, preventing the large deformation and failure of the roadway. This technology can be useful when analyzing and preventing large deformation of soft rock roadways.