Model testing of leakage effect due to multi-cell inflater of rapid protection system in subsea tunnel

Abstract

This paper presents the study of leakage effect due to multi-cell inflater of rapid protection system to protect the possibilities of tunnel damages by flooding threats and unusual leakage to be occurred during and after subsea tunnel construction. Particularly, this protect system should be necessary in subsea tunnel. This research concentrates the physical model tests due to several multi-cell inflater to study protection capacity of leakage between the inflater and tunnel liner. A 27:1 small scale model are used in the model tests. The leakage rate, water pressure and axial displacement of inflater are measured during the model tests. According to the results, the minium leakage rate clearly shows in the case of two-cell inflater compared with in other cases. It is concluded that the results of this research will be very useful to understand the fundamental information of inflater structure design and development the technology of tunnel protection structures in the future.