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Risk assessment of water inrush in karst tunnels and software development

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Abstract

Water inrush makes time extended, instruments destructed, and casualty increased, which is the biggest threat for safe construction of tunnels in karst areas. A software system for risk assessment of water inrush was established with considering eight risk factors, including groundwater level, unfavorable geology, formation lithology, topography, strata inclination, excavation, advanced geological prediction, and monitoring. In the present software system, fuzzy mathematics and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were used to quantitatively describe the risk levels for each factor. The influence degree of each factor to water inrush was assigned an objective weight and a subjective weight, and the proportion of the two weights in the risk assessment was defined as weight distribution. The objective weights of the risk factors were obtained from more than 100 water inrush instances in karst tunnels, whereas the weight distribution was totally derived from expert field assessment and subjective weights were determined by using AHP in the risk assessment. Two case studies of karst tunnels were applied to check the reliability of the proposed software system, and the comparisons between the software assessment and practical excavation yield good consistency. Therefore, the software system can appropriately be used in practice to forecast water inrush in karst tunnels.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (2013CB036000), the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (no. 51139004), Foundation of Shandong University (no. 2012TS064), Key Laboratory of Coal Resources Exploration and Comprehensive Utilization, Ministry of Land and Resources (KF2013-5), and Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering (Ocean University of China), Shandong Province (201362047). The authors would be grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that can help improve the quality of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geotechnical and Structural Engineering Research Center, Shandong University, Ji’nan, 250061, Shandong, China

    Liping Li, Ting Lei, Shucai Li, Qianqing Zhang, Zhenhao Xu, Shaoshuai Shi & Zongqing Zhou

  2. Key Laboratory of Coal Resources Exploration and Comprehensive Utilization, Ministry of Land and Resources, Xi’an, Shanxi, 710054, People’s Republic of China

    Liping Li

  3. Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, Ocean University of China, Shandong Province, Qingdao, Shandong, 266100, People’s Republic of China

    Liping Li

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  1. Liping Li
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  2. Ting Lei
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  3. Shucai Li
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  4. Qianqing Zhang
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  5. Zhenhao Xu
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  7. Zongqing Zhou
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Correspondence to Ting Lei.

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Li, L., Lei, T., Li, S. et al. Risk assessment of water inrush in karst tunnels and software development. Arab J Geosci 8, 1843–1854 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-014-1365-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-014-1365-3

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