Experimental Study on the Effect of Hydraulic Deterioration of Different Drainage Systems on Lining Water Pressure

Abstract

With the increasing operation time of tunnels, the drainage system cannot fulfil its proper function as a result of the deterioration of traditional waterproof and drainage systems (TWDS), such as the blockage of drainage blind pipes and the failure of drainage boards. Therefore, the lining bears a high water pressure and even causes disasters such as tunnel leakage and lining cracking. An effective solution to mitigate these issues is to adjust the tunnel drainage scheme. In view of this, a composite waterproof and drainage system (CWDS) is proposed in this paper. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed system, a series of model experiments were conducted to study the change law of the seepage field of two drainage systems under different blockage conditions. The study results showed that longitudinal blind pipe blockage caused a more significant increase in water pressure than circular blind pipe blockage. In the case of blind pipe blockage, the water pressure of the TWDS tunnels rise rapidly, while the CWDS tunnels could effectively drain and reduce pressure.