Ground Deformation Evaluation during Vertical Shaft Construction through Digital Image Analysis

The construction of underground structures such as power supply lines, communication lines, utility tunnels has significantly increased worldwide for improving urban aesthetics ensuring citizen safety, and efficient use of underground space. Those underground structures are usually constructed along with vertical cylindrical shafts to facilitate their construction and maintenance. When constructing a vertical shaft through the open-cut method, the walls are mostly designed to be flexible, allowing a certain level of displacement. The earth pressure applied to the flexible walls acts as an external force and its accurate estimation is essential for reasonable and economical structure design. The earth pressure applied to the flexible wall is closely interrelated to the displacement of the surrounding ground. This study simulated stepwise excavation for constructing a cylindrical vertical shaft through a centrifugal model experiment. One quadrant of the axisymmetric vertical shaft and the ground were modeled, and ground excavation was simulated by shrinking the vertical shaft. The deformation occurring on the entire ground during the excavation was continuously evaluated through digital image analysis. The digital image analysis evaluated complex ground deformation which varied with wall displacement, distance from the wall, and ground depth. When the ground deformation data accumulate through the method used in this study, they can be used for developing shaft wall models in future for analyzing the earth pressure acting on them.