Stress and wear distribution characteristics of cutterhead for EPB shield tunneling in cobble-boulders

Owing to the high strength and abrasive characteristics of cobble-boulders, cutters are easily worn and damaged during shield tunneling, making construction inefficient. In the present work, the stress on the ripper and scraper on the cutterhead was analyzed by the PFC3D–FLAC3D coupling model of shield tunneling to get insight into the performance of the cutterhead for cutting underground cobble and boulders. The numerical calculation results revealed that the increase in trajectory radius leads to a rising stress on the cutters, and the stress on the front cutting surface is greater than that on the back of the cutters. Moreover, the correlation between cutter wear and stress is revealed based on field measurement data. The distribution of the cutter stress is consistent with the cutter wear and breakage characteristics in actual construction, in which more extensive cutter stress is exhibited, extreme cutter wear appears, and more cutter breakage occurs. Finally, the relationship between the cutterhead opening area's layout and cutter wear distribution was investigated, indicating that the cutter wear extent is the most severe in the region where the radial opening ratio dropped sharply.