Rock reinforcements have been widely used in rock engineering practice and represent a dominant system in mines and underground structures. Even though the term support is generically used to describe the procedures and materials used to improve the stability and maintain the load-carrying capability of rock near the boundaries of underground excavations, a distinction is made between the terms reinforcement and support. In accordance with modern practice (Windsor and Thompson, 1993), support is the application of a reactive force to the surface of excavation and includes techniques and devices such as timber, fill, shotcrete, mesh and steel or concrete sets or liners; while reinforcement is a means of conserving or improving the overall rock mass properties from within the rock mass by techniques such as rock bolts, cables and ground anchors.

In the attached paper on Rock reinforcement modelling using PLAXIS, a practical case using pre-stressed cable elements for a tunnel excavation in PLAXIS 2D is shown.

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