| Abstract: | A two-dimensional computational model is developed here in order to simulate the continuous advance of the Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) Shield during the tunneling process in cohesive soils. The model is based on the combination of the plane strain “transverse–longitudinal” sections that can incorporate the three-dimensional deformation of the soil around and ahead of the shield face. This model is capable of prediciting the soil response due to the shield tunneling before the event, especially in soft ground conditions. An elasto-plastic finite element analysis that is based on the coupled theory of mixtures for inelastic porous media for finite deformation is used in this work to describe the time-dependent deformation of the saturated cohesive soils. The results of this model are compared with the in situ field measurements of the N-2 tunnel project excavated in 1981 in San Francisco using the EPB shield tunneling machine. Reasonable agreement is found between the observed field measurements and the predicted deformations of the soil using the proposed numerical simulation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
