A simple prediction procedure of strain-softening surrounding rock for a circular opening

A simple prediction procedure was investigated for calculating the stresses and displacements of a circular opening. Unlike existed approaches, the proposed approach starts each step with a radius increment. The stress for each annulus could be obtained analytically, while strain increments for each step can be determinate numerically from the compatility equation by finite difference approximation, flow rule and Hooke's law. In the successive manner, the distributions of stresses and displacements could be found. It should be noted that the finial radial stress and displacement were equal to the internal supporting pressure and deformation at the tunnel wall, respectively. By assuming different plastic radii, GRC and the evolution curve of plastic radii and internal supporting pressures could be obtained conveniently. Then the real plastic radius can be calculated by using linear interpolation in the evolution curve. Some numerical and engineering examples were performed to demonstrate the accuracy and validity for the proposed procedure. The comparisons results show that the proposed procedure was faster than that in Lee and Pietrucszczak (2008). The influence of annulus number and dilation on the accuracy of solutions was also investigated. Results show that the larger the annulus number was, the more accurate the solutions were. Solutions in Park et al. (2008) were significantly influenced by dilation.