Experimental study of the dynamic tunnel response adjacent to a building

Abstract

It is important to determine the dynamic behaviour of underground structures under cyclic loading for the seismic underground structural design. The dynamic response of such underground structures is further complicated when considering the interaction with surface buildings. This paper presents a series of dynamic centrifuge tests and 2D numerical modelling to investigate the dynamic response of a shallow cut-and-cover rectangular tunnel and the nearby building in the liquefiable sandy ground. Dynamic soil responses such as the wave propagation and excess pore pressure are successfully captured in both centrifuge testing and numerical modelling. Tunnel uplift, building settlement and soil deformation are determined by the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. Results show the existence of the nearby building can cause significant effects to the tunnel lateral movement and tunnel rotations. The tunnel floatation mechanism is also discussed with a simplified vertical force equation. In addition, the presence of the buried tunnel causes non-uniform settlement distribution along the building range. The comparison of the experimental, numerical building settlement with the analytical and empirical estimations proves the limitation of these methods in considering the building interaction with other structures.