Probabilistic Analysis of Ground Movements Caused by Tunneling in a Spatially Variable Soil
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 19, Issue 12
Abstract
The design and construction of a tunnel in urban areas is a significant undertaking that requires ensuring ground movements, preventing the adverse impact on adjacent structures. However, the conventional methods are always deterministic, rather than taking the natural spatial variability of soil properties into account. In this study, the spatial variability of the soil profile was modeled using a two-dimensional random field and coupled with numerical analysis to obtain a probabilistic characterization of surface deformations. It was assumed that random fields were generated on the basis of the covariance matrix decomposition method in a manner consistent with a specified numerical mesh. A series of parametric analyses were conducted to study the effects of uncertainty due to the variability of soil Young’s modulus on ground movements. The results demonstrate the presented computational framework to be effective in the assessment of surface deformations. The soil variability exerts the influence both on the magnitude and distribution of surface deformations, which depends on the magnitude of the soil variability. Furthermore, it is concluded that negligence of the variability of soil properties in the probability analysis of the surface settlement can lead to an underestimation of the probability of failure, compared to the traditional deterministic analysis.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41807512), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2018M642976), the Hubei Technical Innovation Project (Grant No. 2017ACA186) and the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2019JJ50090). In addition, the authors are also grateful to the reviewers and editors for their valuable comments and suggestions.
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Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 19 • Issue 12 • December 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 23, 2019
Accepted: May 7, 2019
Published online: Oct 3, 2019
Published in print: Dec 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Mar 3, 2020
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