Abstract

Although various methods for effective modeling of pre-reinforced zones have been suggested for numerical analysis of large section tunnels, tunnel designers refer to empirical cases and literature reviews rather than engineering methods because ones who use commercial programs are unfamiliar with a macro-scale approach in general. Therefore, this paper suggests a simple micro-scale approach combined with the macro-scale approach to determine equivalent design parameters for effective numerical modeling of pre-reinforced zones in tunnel. This new approach is to determine the equivalent stiffness of pre-reinforced zones with combination of ground, bulb, and steel in series or/and parallel. For verification, 3-D numerical results from the suggested approach are compared with those of a realistic model. The comparison suggests that two cases make best approximation to a realistic solution: One is related to the series-parallel stiffness system (hereafter SPSS) in which bulb and steel are coupled in parallel and then connected to the ground in series, and the other is the series stiffness system (hereafter SSS) in which only bulb and steel are coupled in series. The SPSS is recommended for stiffness calculation of pre-reinforced zones because the SSS is inconvenient and time-consuming. The SPSS provides slightly bigger vertical displacement at tunnel crown in weathered rock than other cases and give almost identical results to a realistic model for horizontal displacement at tunnel spring line and ground surface settlement. Displacement trends on weathered rock and weathered soil are similar. The SPSS which is suggested in this paper represents the behavior mechanism of pre-reinforced area effectively.