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Experimental investigation on greenfield surface settlement in cohesionless medium due to staged tunneling

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Abstract

Understanding the ground response during tunneling is essential to evaluate the safety of existing infrastructures. Soil–tunnel interactions are a complex phenomenon and depend on the various parameters of soil and tunnel. Physical modeling plays an essential role in understanding the influence of different parameters on the surface settlement due to tunneling. Physical modeling in controlled conditions allows us to investigate and distinctly identify the effect of soil parameters and tunnel on the ground response. This paper presents a novel experimental procedure to simulate the ground loss phenomenon due to tunneling. The developed scaled-down model can simulate the different percentage of volume loss for progressive tunnel construction under 1 g. The ground response has been studied for various volume loss percentages (1–10%) and different soil cover-to-diameter ratio of a tunnel in cohesionless medium. Ground response in terms of the maximum surface settlement, width of transverse surface settlement trough, transverse, and longitudinal influence zone of surface settlement have been measured and reported. Results from the present study match reasonably well with the other reported studies. The reasonability of the results demonstrates the applicability of the current approach to study the ground response due to the tunnel's staged construction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geotechnical Engineering Group, CSIR-Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, Uttrakhand, 247 667, India

    Manojit Samanta

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttrakhand, 247 667, India

    V. A. Sawant

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  1. Manojit Samanta
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  2. V. A. Sawant
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Correspondence to V. A. Sawant.

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Samanta, M., Sawant, V.A. Experimental investigation on greenfield surface settlement in cohesionless medium due to staged tunneling. Innov. Infrastruct. Solut. 6, 106 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41062-021-00475-3

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