Inverse Analysis Approach to Identify the Loads on the External TBM Shield Surface and Its Application

Abstract

Identifying the surrounding rock loads acting on the external shield surface is critical to the safe construction of deep and long tunnels excavated by TBMs (tunnel boring machines). However, it is rather difficult or even impossible to carry out monitoring outside the TBM shield to directly determine the surrounding rock loads. In the present paper, based on modified Newton iteration and numerical simulation, an inverse analysis approach to identify the surrounding rock loads is proposed. This inverse problem is solved by minimizing the objective function that incorporates the difference between the monitored and calculated strains of discrete points on the internal TBM shield surface. During the inverse analysis, the external TBM shield surface is discretized into rectangular regions, and the nodal loads of each region are taken as the inverse parameters. Then, the distributed loads are approximately calculated by the interpolation of the nodal loads of each region. The proposed approach is calibrated with two numerical examples and then applied to analyze in situ monitoring data. The results show that the proposed approach is robust and efficient for identifying the distribution and magnitude of surrounding rock loads, and it is possible to carry out timely countermeasures to avoid shield jamming according to the identified loads.