• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.143-154
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• 2016

This study investigated the occurrences, causes, and mitigation of the recent ground subsidence and underground cavity generation events in Korea. Two main causes of ground subsidence are (1) the soil erosion by seepage during tunneling and earth excavation and (2) the damage of underground pipes. The main cause of the soil erosion during tunneling was the uncontrolled groundwater flow. Especially, when excavating soft grounds using a tunnel boring machine (TBM), the ground near TBM operation halt points were found to be the most vulnerable to failure. The damage of underground pipes was mainly caused by poor construction, material deterioration, and differential settlement in soft soils. The ground subsidence during tunneling and earth excavation can be managed by monitoring the outflow of groundwater and eroded soils in construction sites. It is expected that the ground subsidence by the underground pipe damage can be managed or mitigated by life cycle analysis and maintenance of the buried pipes, and by controlling the earth pressure distribution or increasing the bearing capacity at the upper ground of the buried pipes.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.243-256
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• 2019

Formation of filter cake with little slurry penetration into the tunnel face ground is an essential factor to successfully apply the slurry shield tunnel boring machine (TBM) for tunnelling work. However, when the bentonite slurry is in contact with seawater, it is not easy to guarantee the filter cake formation due to decrease of the swelling volume and viscosity of the slurry. In this study, in order to evaluate the effect of the seawater on the applicability of the slurry shield TBM method, the slurry injection tests were carried out with the variation of seawater percentage contained in the slurry samples as well as the variation of soil types. And then, the effect of these two factors on the slurry clogging phenomena was theoretically and experimentally figure out. As a result, it was found that the value of the slurry clogging criteria (SCC) indicating the applicability of the slurry shield TBM significantly decreases up to 67% as the percentage of seawater increases from 0% up to 20%. In addition, it was found to be necessary to take into account both the characteristics of slurry and soil types together when judging the applicability of the slurry shield TBM method by assessing the slurry penetration characteristics that will occur during tunnelling work.

• 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.25 no.6
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• pp.583-603
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• 2023

Recently, the advancement of mechanical tunnel boring machine (TBM) technology and the characteristics of subsea railway tunnels subjected to hydrostatic pressure have led to the widespread application of shield TBM methods in the design and construction of subsea railway tunnels. Subsea railway tunnels are exposed in a constant pore water pressure and are influenced by the amplification of seismic waves during earthquake. In particular, seismic loads acting on subsea railway tunnels under various ground conditions such as soft ground, soft soil-rock composite ground, and fractured zones can cause significant changes in tunnel displacement and stress, thereby affecting tunnel safety. Additionally, the dynamic response of the ground and tunnel varies based on seismic load parameters such as frequency characteristics, seismic waveform, and peak acceleration, adding complexity to the behavior of the ground-tunnel structure system. In this study, a finite difference method is employed to model the entire ground-tunnel structure system, considering hydrostatic pressure, for the investigation of dynamic behavior of subsea railway tunnel during earthquake. Since the key factors influencing the dynamic behavior during seismic events are ground conditions and seismic waves, six analysis cases are established based on virtual ground conditions: Case-1 with weathered soil, Case-2 with hard rock, Case-3 with a composite ground of soil and hard rock in the tunnel longitudinal direction, Case-4 with the tunnel passing through a narrow fault zone, Case-5 with a composite ground of soft soil and hard rock in the tunnel longitudinal direction, and Case-6 with the tunnel passing through a wide fractured zone. As a result, horizontal displacements due to earthquakes tend to increase with an increase in ground stiffness, however, the displacements tend to be restrained due to the confining effects of the ground and the rigid shield segments. On the contrary, peak compressive stress of segment significantly increases with weaker ground stiffness and the effects of displacement restrain contribute the increase of peak compressive stress of segment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Groundwater Environment
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.64-71
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• 1995

Electrical soundings were conducted in and around the Nanjido waste landfill in August, 1994 and February, 1995. Schlumberger array was adopted and 37 and 22 soundings were performed around and in the Nanjido landfill, respectively. Besides, self potentials were measured at 50 points, in front of the right Nanjido landfill. Interpretations of the sounding data show low resistivity zones of about 10 Ω-m at depth ranging from 10 to 80 m from the surface in front of the landfill and of about 6 Ω-m at depth ranging from 37 m to 130 m in the landfill. It appears that these low resistivity zones are contaminated by or saturated with leachate, and their depths are deeper than those of boring data by 20∼30 m. These results indicate the possibility of contamination of weathered zone and the upper part of the bed rock in these areas. But sounding data obtained at the back of the landfill reveal more resistive and thinner low resistivity zones than those in and in front of the landfill. Thus it is concluded that the degree of contamination by leachate in and in front of the landfill is greater than that at the back of the landfill.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.65-74
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• 2014

Borehole investigation which is mainly used to figure out geotechnical characterizations at construction work has the benefit that it provides a clear and convincing geotechnical information. But it has limitations to get the overall information of the construction site because it is performed at point location. In contrast, geophysical measurements like seismic survey has the advantage that the geological stratum information of a large area can be characterized in a continuous cross-section but the result from geophysics survey has wide range of values and is not suitable to determine the geotechnical design values directly. Therefore it is essential to combine borehole data and geophysics data complementally. Accordingly, in this study, a three-dimensional spatial interpolation of the cross-sectional distribution of seismic refraction was performed using digitizing and geostatistical method (krigring). In the process, digital map were used to increase the trustworthiness of method. Using this map, errors of ground height which are broken out in measurement from boring investigation and geophysical measurements can be revised. After that, average seismic velocity are derived by comparing borehole data with geophysical speed distribution data of each soil layer. During this process, outlier analysis is adapted. On the basis of the average seismic velocity, integrated analysis techniques to determine the three-dimensional geological stratum information is established. Finally, this analysis system is applied to dam construction field.