Evaluation of the Construction Effectiveness for Shield Tunneling in Complex Ground Based on FCE and AHP

Shield tunneling in complex ground is more difficult than that in homogeneous formation and its construction effectiveness has significant impact on the duration and cost of project. Therefore, a reasonable evaluation of construction effectiveness for shield tunneling is necessary. This paper developed an evaluation model based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Construction effectiveness was divided into four grades including Extremely Low, Low, High, and Extremely High. Considering eight critical factors, the AHP structure was established hierarchically to determine these factors’ importance weights. Membership functions were derived based on statistical analysis of samples and applied to construct fuzzy decision matrix acquiring the final ranking. A case study was illustrated to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed model. The model can provide a crucial basis for the analysis on construction difficulty of shield tunneling in complex ground.