• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.283-293
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• 2019

Evaluating the stability of the excavation face of the cross-river shield tunnel with good accuracy is considered as a nonlinear and multivariable complex issue. Understanding the stability evaluation method of the shield tunnel excavation face is vital to operate and control the shield machine during shield tunneling. Considering the instability mechanism of the excavation face of the cross-river shield and the characteristics of this engineering, seven evaluation indexes of the stability of the excavation face were selected, i.e., the over-span ratio, buried depth of the tunnel, groundwater condition, soil permeability, internal friction angle, soil cohesion and advancing speed. The weight of each evaluation index was obtained by using the analytic hierarchy process and the entropy weight method. The evaluation model of the cross-river shield construction excavation face stability is established based on the idea point method. The feasibility of the evaluation model was verified by the engineering application in a cross-river shield tunnel project in China. Results obtained via the evaluation model are in good agreement with the actual construction situation. The proposed evaluation method is demonstrated as a promising and innovative method for the stability evaluation and safety construction of the cross-river shield tunnel engineerings.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.49-56
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a pathogenic bacteria filtration instrument for infection prevention during mouth-to-mouth ventilation. Methods: Two kinds of face shields were used for the study. One rescuer blew the filter through a bag valve mask and the filter was then cultured for bacteria. The mask was tested both on the front and back side. Results: Two kinds of face shields including the KF shield and CM shield were tested. The KF shield has received national certification and it prevented transmission of bacterial infection but the CM shield showed the opposite result and did not prevent bacterial transmission. Pathogenic bacteria were found on the back of the CM shield. Conclusion: A certified face shield is very important to prevent bacterial transmission. Face shields should be demonstrated and used by paramedic students.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.137-141
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• 2016

Cross contamination between a patient and rescuer or CPR trainees can occur when performing mouth to mouth ventilation during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). On the other hand, there has been a lack of research on the filtration efficacy of face shields that are designed to protect people from cross-contamination. This study aims to secure the safety of rescuers from communicable diseases in pre-hospital emergency settings and CPR trainees by verifying the protective effects of face shields. The FA shield and CM Shield were used to verify the safety. The bacteria collected from filters used by CPR trainees were incubated. These incubated bacteria were smeared onto the new filters, and were then blown out through the filters using a Bag Valve Mask (BVM) and the pathogens at the front and the back of the filters were checked. While the FA shield was effective in preventing the transmission of pathogens, the CM shield did not prevent the transmission of pathogens. Therefore, some of face shields that received national certification are ineffective in preventing cross-contamination. Accordingly, it is necessary to verify the safety of other face shields used domestically.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.97-107
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• 2019

Based on the results of Han et al. (2016), in the failure zone ahead of the tunnel face it can be obviously identified that a shear failure band occurs in the lower part and a pressure arch happens at the upper part, which was often neglected in analyzing the face stability of shield tunnel. In order to better describe the collapse failure feature of the tunnel face, a new improved failure mechanism is proposed to evaluate the face stability of shield tunnel excavated in layered soils in the framework of limit analysis by using spatial discretization technique and linear interpolation method in this study. The developed failure mechanism is composed of two parts: i) the rotational failure mechanism denoting the shear failure band and ii) a uniformly distributed force denoting the pressure arch effect. Followed by the comparison between the results of critical face pressures provided by the developed model and those by the existing works, which indicates that the new developed failure mechanism provides comparatively reasonable results.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.823-831
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• 2018

The most important issue during shield TBM tunneling in soft ground formations is to appropriately control ground surface settlement. Among various operational conditions in shield TBM tunneling, the face pressure and backfill pressure should be the most important and immediate measure to restrain surface settlement during excavation. In this paper, a 3-D hydro-mechanical coupled FE model is developed to numerically simulate the entire process of shield TBM tunneling, which is verified by comparing with real field measurements of ground surface settlement. The effect of permeability and stiffness of ground formations on tunneling-induced surface settlement was discussed in the parametric study. An increase in the face pressure and backfill pressure does not always lead to a decrease in surface settlement, but there are the critical face pressure and backfill pressure. In addition, considering the relatively low permeability of ground formations, the surface settlement consists of two parts, i.e., immediate settlement and consolidation settlement, which shows a distinct settlement behavior to each other.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.197-204
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• 2006

A large sectional tunnelling method using Shield TBM is expected to be popular as domestic demand of long tunnel gets growing. Although a shield tunnelling method has been recognized as prominent method in consideration of stability and applicability in shallow and poor ground, the cases of accident and constructional trouble have been often happened due to unexpected poor ground condition, or selection and use of improper shield machine. Especially, troubling cases at tunnel face are frequently occurred, so supporting pressure control of tunnel face would be the main issue for securing safer and more efficient tunnel excavation using Shield TBM. In this point, we carried out the numerical feed-back analysis to compare the ground deformation pattern with theoretical result at tunnel face.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.417-426
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• 2024

Shield tunneling method is widely used to build tunnels in complex geological environment. Stability control of tunnel face is the key to the safety of projects. To improve the excavation efficiency or perform equipment maintenance, the excavation chamber sometimes is not fully filled with support medium, which can reduce the load and increase tunneling speed while easily lead to ground collapse. Due to the high risk of the face failure under non-fully support mode, the tunnel face stability should be carefully evaluated. Whether compressive air is required for compensation and how much air pressure should be provided need to be determined accurately. Based on the upper bound theorem of limit analysis, a non-fully support rotational failure model is developed in this study. The failure mechanism of the model is verified by numerical simulation. It shows that increasing the density of supporting medium could significantly improve the stability of tunnel face while the increase of tunnel diameter would be unfavorable for the face stability. The critical support ratio is used to evaluate the face failure under the nonfully support mode, which could be an important index to determine whether the specific unsupported height could be allowed during shield tunneling. To avoid of face failure under the non-fully support mode, several charts are provided for the assessment of compressed air pressure, which could help engineers to determine the required air pressure for face stability.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.265-281
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• 2022

A set of slurry shield test system capable of cutter cutting and slurry automatic circulation is used to investigate the deformation characteristics, the evolution characteristics of support resistance and the distribution and evolution process of earth pressure during excavating and collapsing of slurry shield tunneling in circular-gravel layer. The influence of cover-span ratio on surface subsidence, support resistance and failure mode of excavation face is also discussed. Three-dimensional numerical calculations are performed to verify the reliability of the test results. The results show that, with the decrease of the supporting force of the excavation face, the surface subsidence goes through four stages: insensitivity, slow growth, rapid growth and stability. The influence of shield excavation on the axial earth pressure of the front soil is greater than that of the vertical earth pressure. When the support resistance of the excavation face decreases to the critical value, the soil in front of the excavation face collapses. The shape of the collapse is similar to that of a bucket. The ultimate support resistance increase with the increase of the cover-span ratio, however, the angle between the bottom of the collapsed body and the direction of the tunnel excavation axis when the excavation face is damaged increase first and then becomes stable. The surface settlement value and the range of settlement trough decrease with the increase of cover-span ratio. The numerical results are basically consistent with the model test results.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.217-230
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• 2022

The adequate control of TBM face pressure is of vital importance to maintain face stability by preventing face collapse and surface settlement. An EPB shield TBM excavates the ground by applying face pressure with the excavated soil in the pressure chamber. One of the challenges during the EPB shield TBM operation is the control of face pressure due to difficulty in managing the excavated soil. In this study, the face pressure of an EPB shield TBM was predicted using the geological and operational data acquired from a domestic TBM tunnel site. Four machine learning algorithms: KNN (K-Nearest Neighbors), SVM (Support Vector Machine), RF (Random Forest), and XGB (eXtreme Gradient Boosting) were applied to predict the face pressure. The model comparison results showed that the RF model yielded the lowest RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) value of 7.35 kPa. Therefore, the RF model was selected as the optimal machine learning algorithm. In addition, the feature importance of the RF model was analyzed to evaluate appropriately the influence of each feature on the face pressure. The water pressure indicated the highest influence, and the importance of the geological conditions was higher in general than that of the operation features in the considered site.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.273-282
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• 2016

This study estimates tunnel face pressure through existing 8 analytical equations and 3D numerical analysis, and compares and examines it. In general, the estimating tunnel face pressure of domestic shield TBM has been examined by a method according to analytical equation and empirical method, but numerical analysis is combined in a section passing complicated stratigraphic condition and special soil condition. Therefore, the researcher is to find a reliable method to examine of tunnel face pressure by confirming a correlation between tunnel face pressure estimated by equation and tunnel face pressure estimated by numerical analysis program. When tunnel face pressure is estimated, both analytical equation and numerical analysis were identically examined in soil conditions such as sandy soil and cohesive soil. In addition, existing analytical equation is used as equation, and 3D analysis copying construction process and shield tunnel as numerical analysis.