Effect of the lateral earth pressure coefficient on settlements during mechanized tunneling

Tunnel excavation leads to a disturbance on the initial stress balance of surrounding soils, which causes convergences around the tunnel and settlements at the ground surface. Considering the effective impact of settlements on the structures at the surface, it is necessary to estimate them, especially in urban areas. In the present study, ground settlements due to the excavation of East-West Line 7 of the Tehran Metro (EWL7) and the Abuzar tunnels are evaluated and the effect of the lateral earth pressure coefficient (K0) on their extension is investigated. The excavation of the tunnels was performed by TBMs (Tunnel Boring Machines). The coefficient of lateral earth pressure (K0) is one of the most important geotechnical parameters for tunnel design and is greatly influenced by the geological characteristics of the surrounding soil mass along the tunnel route. The real (in-situ) settlements of the ground surface were measured experimentally using leveling methods along the studied tunnels and the results were compared with evaluated settlements obtained from both semi-empirical and numerical methods (using the finite difference software FLAC3D). The comparisons permitted to show that the adopted numerical models can effectively be used to predict settlements induced by a tunnel excavation. Then a numerical parametric study was conducted to show the influence of the K0 values on the ground settlements. Numerical investigations also showed that the shapes of settlement trough of the studied tunnels, in a transverse section, are not similar because of their different diameters and depths of the tunnels.