• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.145-160
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• 2018

Long subsea tunnel is subject to many restrictions in terms of spatial limitation when vertical or inclined shafts are built for tunnel ventilation. So, the construction of some artificial island is required to provide ventilation. But, because of construction difficulty and cost increase, it is necessary to minimize the artificial island construction. As a result, ventilation distance become longer and supply airflow becomes excessive due to air leakage, So, duct mounting for temporary ventilation is impossible or fan pressure and power increase exponentially. Therefore, in order to build a long subsea tunnel, it is necessary to overcome these practical problems and to develop technical solution that can keep the comfortable condition of tunnel environment during construction. In previous study, we have found that air leakage is the key factor in solving these problems and experimental results show that the new connection method has a leakage rate of about $1.46mm^2/m^2$ (Jo et al., 2017). In this study, we present the experimental results of the measurement of the leakage rate of the prototype with the new connection method, and analyze experimentally the improvement of the leakage rate when applying the flexible cover inside the duct to improve the leakage performance of the existing connection method.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.319-333
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• 2017

The construction of long sub-sea tunnel does not provide the favorable condition for the installation of ventilation system to be used during construction due to the constrained construction space. For the ventilation system required during construction, the artificial island where ventilation shaft is located is constructed at some location along the sub-sea tunnel route, which requires a high construction cost. Therefore, it is intended, as much as possible technically, to minimize the construction of artificial island. However, this requires a longer distance between ventilation shafts, there-by causing increased air leakage at the ventilation duct connection points due to the higher fan pressure being required to deliver ventilation air. Previously the air leakage was studied as an important issue. In this study experiments were carried out to develop the improved duct connection method considering various conditions such as, tunnel length, etc. Additionally, its performance results with leakage rates are shown and compared to the "S" class leakage rate of SIA. As a result, the new duct coupling type of improved method is analyzed as applicable to such a 30 km long tunnel with the leakage rate of $1.46mm^2/m^2$, which is better performance than SIA leakage rates.