Determination of tunnel support pressure under the pile tip using upper and lower bounds with a superimposed approach

Abstract

This study aimed to develop upper and lower bounds to predict the tunnel support pressure under the pile tip during the circular tunnel excavation. Most previous studies on the upper and lower bound methods were carried out for the single ground structures, e.g., retaining wall, foundation, ground anchor and tunnel, in the homogeneous ground conditions, since the pile-soil-tunnel interaction problem is very complicated and sophisticated to solve using those bound methods. Therefore, in the lower bound approach two appropriate stress fields were proposed for single pile and tunnel respectively, and then they were superimposed. In addition, based on the superimposition several failure mechanisms were proposed for the upper bound solution. Finally, these upper bound mechanisms were examined by shear strain data from the laboratory model test and numerical analysis using finite element method.