With the rapid development of global economy, underground projects such as underground transportation, strategic storage, and mineral resource exploitation are increasing in scale and speed. Meantime, because of engineering disturbance and complex geological conditions, engineering geological disasters such as large deformation, rock burst, water-inrush, and surface subsidence occur frequently in the process of underground engineering and construction, causing casualties, equipment damage, project delay, engineering failure, and so on. Therefore, the disaster prevention and construction safety of underground engineering have become the focus of worldwide experts in the field of civil engineering.

This special issue aims to call for research papers and review articles concerning underground engineering under complex geological conditions, including theory analysis, laboratory experiments, and numerical simulations. The articles focusing on the stability mechanism and control technology of underground mineral resource exploitation are particularly welcomed.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Mechanical behavior of rock and rock-like materials
• Characteristics of compaction, creep, and seepage of fractured rock mass
• Theory and experiment of rock seepage and dynamics
• Rock deformation mechanism and control technique in underground engineering
• Catastrophic mechanism and prevention technique of water-inrush in underground engineering
• Tunnel design and tunnel reliability assessment
• Innovative techniques and applications of underground resource development
• Study on numerical simulation methodology in rock engineering