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Significance and formulation of ground loss in tunneling-induced settlement prediction: a data-driven study

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Abstract

Ground loss is the volume of soil excavated in excess of designed excavation. It defines the boundary conditions for ground deformation field and thereby dominates the magnitude of tunneling-induced ground settlement. In practice, it is generally quantified by a parameter called ground loss parameter. To date, there is no unanimously agreed formulation for ground loss parameter despite its indispensable role in developing both empirical and analytical solutions for tunneling-induced ground settlement. Herein, a comprehensive field database is utilized to quantitatively assess existing formulations of ground loss, and to unravel its role in settlement prediction via inverse analysis. It reveals that remarkable errors can be generated by classical solutions for tunneling-induced ground settlement. This implies that the reliability of classical solutions for tunneling-induced settlement can be potentially improved with a more accurate formulation of ground loss. A data-driven formulation for ground loss is developed with aid of the random forest algorithm, and it can well capture the target value with an R-value equaling 0.84. The developed formulation is further implemented in the O’Reilly and New solution, yielding a hybrid model for settlement prediction. The hybrid model can accurately predict the actual settlement with an R-value of 0.84, outperforming the purely data-driven model and further confirming the accuracy of the proposed formulation of ground loss.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was sponsored by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFB1705201) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 52090082). These financial supports are gratefully acknowledged. We sincerely appreciate the thoughtful and constructive comments provided by the editor and reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Civil Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Yuhao Ren & Minxiang Zhu

  2. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Building Safety and Energy Efficiency, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Chao Zhang

  3. Research Center for Advanced Underground Space Technologies, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Renpeng Chen & Jianbo Wang

Authors
  1. Yuhao Ren
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  2. Chao Zhang
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  3. Minxiang Zhu
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  4. Renpeng Chen
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Correspondence to Chao Zhang.

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Ren, Y., Zhang, C., Zhu, M. et al. Significance and formulation of ground loss in tunneling-induced settlement prediction: a data-driven study. Acta Geotech. 18, 4941–4956 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-01859-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-01859-8

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