korosh shahriar

The hydraulic properties of the rock masses are of great importance in analyzing the behavior and stability of the structures constructed on or in rock mass. Permeability is key parameter among other rock mass features due to its important role in rock mass overall behavior. According to aforementioned reason, numerous efforts have been made by researchers in the field of rock mechanics for its obtaining. To access the rock masses’ permeability, in-situ test methods and simulation techniques could be used. In-situ tests like Lugeon Test are time-consuming and costly and they provide local results. Simulation base methods calculate the permeability of the model that is generated similar to the real region indeed and the developing the results to the real condition always raises substantial challenges. according to the aforementioned reason, direct acquiring of permeability with optimum cost and time which is easily generalizable to the overall of a region would be very important. In this work using crack tensor concept, permeability tensor of Lorestan’s Rudbar dam cavern is calculated efficiently by considering rock mass structural features. Resulted permeability of the power plant’s cavern was obtained equal to  that seems to be acceptable compared to the measured values which is obtained  9/87×10-7 m/s.

Summary:

This paper reflects the role of different constitutive models on the deformations induced by tunneling in the urban area. These constitutive models were applied in finite element analysis of tunnel-induced subsidence for the case study of the Amirkabir Tunnel in Tehran. The results of this paper indicate that the numerical simulation of tunneling induced settlement with hardening soil small strain stiffness model is much more accurate than other constitutive models. 

Accurate prediction of tunneling induced settlement is one of the most important challenges encountered in urban underground projects. Generally, such predictions are usually obtained by the application of numerical simulation, where the accuracy of the results depends on several factors. The constitutive models play an indicative role in the accuracy of numerical simulation of tunneling induced settlement. This issue was studied by comparing the effect of different constitutive models on the development of ground deformations around the tunnel and the tunneling induced settlement for a case study.     

Methodology and Approaches:

Finite element analysis of tunneling induced deformations using PLAXIS software was performed for three different elastoplastic constitutive models including Mohr-Coulomb, hardening soil, and small strain hardening. The input data of numerical simulation were captured from different in-suite and laboratory tests on the host ground of the Amirkabir tunnel as a case study. Tunnel construction was modeled based on the as-built condition of the excavation stages of the T4 section of the Amirkabir tunnel. Finally, numerical results were compared and verified with monitoring results and field measurements.

Results showed that the Mohr-Coulomb model provides a lower prediction of vertical displacements comparing to two other implemented models. Furthermore, the Mohr-Coulomb model shows an unrealistic uplift of the tunnel floor after all of the excavation stages. Results illustrated that using hardening soil models, with sophisticated features including non-linearity pre-failure and high stiffness under small strain, considerably improves the prediction of displacements. It is observed that using hardening soil small strain stiffness model, the accuracy of predictions increased noticeably compared to the field measurements. A full comparison between the results from Mohr-Coulomb and Hardening Soil cases yields some important differences, which are presented in this paper.

Selecting the appropriate model size is a challenging issue in the numerical modelling of groundwater inflow into underground excavation. This issue was studied in this paper by presenting a methodology for selecting appropriate domain size for numerical modeling of groundwater inflow into tunnel that is excavated inside of semi-infinite aquifer. To reach this goal, first, a dimensionless factor, so-called normalized rate of inflow variation (NRIV), was defined in cooperation with its limit value, so-called acceptable level of variation (ALV). Then, the appropriate or suitable domain size (SDS) of numerical model was determined based on the NRIV and ALV. The applicability of suggested methodology was evaluated for the results of wide range geometrical parameter of tunnel (including different tunnel radiuses and depths) and different flow domain sizes. The results of this study indicate that the required domain size for numerical modelling of groundwater inflow into tunnel increase nonlinearly for larger and deeper tunnels. Moreover, the required domain size increases to 1.8 times by decreasing the level of ALV from 0.0005 to 0.0001, where the relative accuracy of results has only increased up to 4%. Since the larger domain size requires much computational difficulties and insignificant accuracy, the ALV in the level of 0.0005 is suggested for practical numerical modelling of groundwater inflow into tunnels.