Abstract

In general, the effects of steel ribs are not considered in the numerical analysis of tunnel design. However, attempts have been increased recently to consider these effects in the analysis of shallow tunnels in soft ground, based on the fact that the steel ribs embedded in the shotcrete take a role to support some portion of the redistributed load due to excavation. In such analyses, the steel ribs can be considered in four different methods: (1) a conventional method where the steel ribs are not considered, (2) a method using the equivalent composite cross section in which the bending moment of shotcrete is not considered, (3) a method using the equivalent composite cross section in which both the compressive stress and the bending moment for the shotcrete and steel rib are considered, and (4) a method using beam elements for the shotcrete and the steel rib, respectively. These methods are adopted in the numerical analysis using FLAC 2D to investigate stresses of both the shotcrete and the steel rib. The overall results show that the analyses are more practical and economical when the effects of steel rib are considered for the methods (2), (3), and (4). Since the results of those analyses considering steel rib capacity may be different according to the ground condition, it will be necessary to consider the appropriate method among them in accordance with design conditions.