Investigating the Interaction Between Stabilized Excavation by Nailing and Adjacent Urban Tunnels: Case Study

Abstract

Urban development could be evaluated by considering the transportation and construction industries. The transportation industry development causes an increase in the urban subway lines as well as underground tunnels. Concerning the construction industry, the large-scale buildings development such as commercial malls, high-rise buildings, and underground parking structures may require deep excavations at metropolitan projects. In this paper, a parametric study is carried out by considering the distance of a tunnel from a retaining wall with the staged construction. PLAXIS 2.0D ver.8.5 software is used as an analysis tool. The results show that existing tunnels are affected more than retaining walls during an excavation when the structural response is considered. By increasing the horizontal distance of tunnel center from the wall, lateral displacement and the bending moment of the tunnel would decrease 14% and the vertical displacement and bending moment of tunnel’s Crown would reduce by 15% and 12%, respectively. These interaction effects become negligible after a distance of 5 times the tunnel diameter. Besides, the existence of the tunnel in the vicinity of excavations would increase the top horizontal displacement of the retaining wall by about 13%. It is worthwhile to point out that the current paper is based on a case study on Sharif University multistory underground parking located near the subway tunnel in Tehran city stabilized by deploying a nailing and anchorage system.