A comparison of stress-displacement for a pressure tunnel with impermeable or permeable liner in elastic porous media

Abstract

Referring to the aforetime literature, the elastic problem for a deep pressure tunnel with impermeable or permeable liner in a saturated elastic porous media that obeys Terzaghi’s effective stress principle is further investigated. In the analyses, the influences of the changes of the pore water pressure around the opening, the construction sequence of the tunnel based on a new model and the interaction between the liner and the surrounding geomaterial on the mechanical response of the tunnel are appropriately considered. The stress-displacement for a pressure tunnel with impermeable or permeable liner is analytically dealt with. Compared to the previous works, the support pressure and displacement between impermeable liner and permeable liner, which have a significant influence on tunnel design, is analytically derived and compared. The presented solutions contain previously known results as the special cases, for example, classical Kirsch’s solution and Savin’s solution. The sensitivity analysis indicates that although the specific values are different, the variations of stress-displacement field for a tunnel with impermeable liner or permeable liner have roughly the same trend with various parameters.