Simple Method for the Design of Jet Grouted Umbrellas in Tunneling

Tunnel excavation in cohesionless soils implies the use of a temporary supporting structure prior to lining installation. This temporary structure has to couple safety and economy, and can be conveniently realized using ground improvement techniques (for instance, by creating an arch of partially overlapped subhorizontal jet grouted columns). The adoption of ground improvement techniques results in structures far from having a perfect shape because they are intrinsically affected by defects (in both geometrical and mechanical characteristics), and therefore their design may hide unforeseen risks. As a consequence, this is the typical case in which sophisticated numerical analyses may just give the illusion of being refined, if possible defects are not correctly taken into account. In this paper a simple yet rational analytical method for the design of a nonclosed tunnel supporting structure that may be of some help to this aim is presented. It is done with reference to a simple two-dimensional scheme. In the first part of the paper, a design chart of optimal shape and minimum structural thickness of the cross section of the supporting structure is shown. In the second part, an iterative procedure to verify the stability or to design the minimum structural thickness of an existing supporting structure with a predefined shape is described. This method, coupled with the analysis of structural demand, allows one in principle to plot design charts. This approach can easily take into account structural defects with a semiprobabilistic approach and therefore with a chosen risk level, which is of great help to the designer at least in a preliminary design stage. The proposed semiprobabilistic procedure is applied to the case of a temporary supporting structure realized by partially overlapped subhorizontal jet grouted columns, intrinsically affected by defects in diameter and position. The variability of these geometrical parameters was considered based on the large quantity of experimental evidence collected in field trials by the writers and published elsewhere.