Abstract

This study proposes a new concept of a tunnel central drainage system by using a drain board to make a breakthrough on difficulties in the installation of conventional drainage system and drawdown of its drain capacity especially in long tunnels. A fundamental study has been performed for evaluation of the drain capacity of the planar drainage system adopted in this study. In fact, the system proposed makes possible to omit the side, transverse as well as central drainage pipes required in the conventional system, even if its drain capacity and any guideline for design are not available to date. In this circumstance, it is carried out to investigate the correlation between drain capacities and, shapes and positions of the columns of the drain board in terms of a variety of water inflows through hydrological model tests. It is shown from the tests that a drain capacity is highly influenced by the shape and the distance between the columns of a drain board in flowing direction, and a round rectangular shape of the columns leads to the highest capacity of drainage. And also, the shorter distance between the columns in flowing direction, the higher drain capacity would be achieved.