• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.281-302
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• 2021

Railway projects have been consistently increasing in Korea. In relation to this trend, the mechanized tunneling using Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) is preferably applied for mining urban areas and passing under rivers. The TBM tunneling under difficult grounds like mixed faces with high water pressure could require ground improvements for stable TBM advance or safe cutter head intervention (CHI). In this study, pre-grouting works for CHI in Daegok-Sosa railway project are presented in terms of the grouting zone design, the executions and the results, the lessons learned from the experience. It should be mentioned that the grouting from inside TBM was carried out several times and turned out to be inefficient in the project. Therefore, grouting experiences from the surface are highlighted in this study. Jet grouting was implemented on CHI points on land, while permeation grouting off shore in the Han River, which mostly allow to access the cutter head of TBM in free air with stable faces. The results of CHI works have been analyzed and the lesson learned are suggested.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2016

When utilizing a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) for tunnelling work, unexpected ground conditions can be encountered that are not predicted in the design stage. These include fractured zones or mixed ground conditions that are likely to reduce the stability of TBM excavation, and result in considerable economic losses such as construction delays or increases in costs. Minimizing these potential risks during tunnel construction is therefore a crucial issue in any mechanized tunneling project. This paper proposed the potential risk events that may occur due to risky ground conditions. A resistivity survey is utilized to predict the risky ground conditions ahead of the tunnel face during construction. The potential risk events are then evaluated based on their occurrence probability and impact. A TBM risk management system that can suggest proper solution methods (measures) for potential risk events is also developed. Multi-Criterion Decision Making (MCDM) is utilized to determine the optimal solution method (optimal measure) to handle risk events. Lastly, an actual construction site, at which there was a risk event during Earth Pressure-Balance (EPB) Shield TBM construction, is analyzed to verify the efficacy of the proposed system.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.394-406
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• 2019

Difficult ground conditions (e.g., fault zone and mixed grounds) are highly probable to appear in subsea and urban tunnels because of the shallow working depth and alluvial characteristics. TBM usually experienced decrease of penetration rate and increase of downtime when it meets these difficult ground conditions. The problems are usually caused by the adverse geological conditions, and it is preferable to determine the optimal operational parameters of TBM based on the previous operational data obtained while excavating a preceding tunnel. This study carried out for efficient TBM excavation in fault zone and mixed grounds. TBM excavation data from the tunnel site in Singapore and the characteristics of the TBM excavation data was analyzed. The key operational parameters (i.e., thrust, torque, and RPM), penetration rate, and downtime were highly influenced by the presence of fault zones and mixed grounds, and the features was discussed. It is expected that the results and main discussions will be useful information for future tunneling projects in similar geological conditions.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.528-546
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• 2018

Cases of TBM tunnelling have been consistently increasing worldwide. In many recent subsea and urban tunnelling projects, TBM excavation has been preferably considered due to its advantages over drill and blast tunnelling. Difficult ground conditions are highly probable to appear in subsea and urban tunnels because of the shallow working depth and alluvial characteristics. Under the difficult ground conditions, ground reinforcement measures should be considered including grouting, while it is of great importance to select the optimal grout material and injection method to cope with the ground condition. The benefits from TBM excavation, such as fast excavation, increased safety, and reduced environmental impact, can be achieved by applying appropriate ground reinforcement with the minimum overrun of cost and time. In this report, various grouting methods were reviewed so that they can be applied in difficult ground conditions. In addition, domestic and international cases of successful ground reinforcement for difficult grounds were introduced for future reference.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.13-24
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• 2021

Tunnel boring machine (TBM) is widely used for tunnel excavation in hard rock and soft ground. In the perspective of TBM-based tunneling, one of the main challenges is to drive the machine optimally according to varying geological conditions, which could significantly lead to saving highly expensive costs by reducing the total operation time. Generally, drilling investigations are conducted to survey the geological ground before the TBM tunneling. However, it is difficult to provide the precise ground information over the whole tunnel path to operators because it acquires insufficient samples around the path sparsely and irregularly. To overcome this issue, in this study, we proposed a geological type classification system using the TBM operating data recorded in a 5 s sampling rate. We first categorized the various geological conditions (here, we limit to granite) as three geological types (i.e., rock, soil, and mixed type). Then, we applied the preprocessing methods including outlier rejection, normalization, and extracting input features, etc. We adopted a deep neural network (DNN), which has 6 hidden layers, to classify the geological types based on TBM operating data. We evaluated the classification system using the 10-fold cross-validation. Average classification accuracy presents the 75.4% (here, the total number of data were 388,639 samples). Our experimental results still need to improve accuracy but show that geology information classification technique based on TBM operating data could be utilized in the real environment to complement the sparse ground information.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.19-32
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• 2011

The risk assessment is essential for tunnel design in order to minimize risks associated with uncertainty about geological conditions and tunneling method. This paper provides a comparative risk analysis of a large single bore TBM driven tunnel against sequentially excavated NATM tunnel for a mixed-face large-diameter urban tunnel project near or under a river. The focus of this assessment is on the risks associated with the tunnel excavation methods, in particular whether a TBM or NATM presents more or less risk to achieve the planned excavation duration and bring the project within the estimated bid price. First, the impacts and risks to tunnel construction under each method were discussed, and the risks were scored and ranked in the order of perceived severity and likelihood. Finally, the assessment from a risk based perspective was conducted to decide which alternate tunneling method is more likely to deliver the project with the least time and cost. It is very important to note that this study is only applied to this tunnel project with specific geological conditions and other contract requirements.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1073-1090
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• 2018

Since the domestic utility tunnels were built mainly in the development project of the new city, they are all in the form of cut-and-cover box tunnel. But, in the case of overseas construction of utility tunnels for existing urban areas, the bored tunnel types are mainly adopted. It is reasonable to install bored tunnels in a downtown area because it is difficult to block the roads or install bypass roads due to heavy traffic and civil complaints. In order to activate the utility tunnels in bored type, it is necessary to secure optimized cross-sectional design technology considering the optimal supplying capacity and mutual influencing factors (Thermal Interference, electrolytic corrosion, efficiency of the maintenance, etc.) of utilities (power cables, telecommunication cables, water pipes, etc.). The optimal cross-section design method for bored utility tunnels is ultimately to derive the optimal arrangement technique for the utilities. In order to develop the design methods, firstly, the cases of tunnel cross-section (Shield TBM, Conventional Tunneling) in overseas shall be investigated to analyze the characteristics of the installation of utilities in the section and installation of auxiliary facilities, It is necessary to sort out and analyze the criteria related to the inner cross-section design (arrangement) presented in the standards and guidelines.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.453-467
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• 2018

The excavation performance and the cutting tool wear prediction of shield TBM are very important issues for design and construction in TBM tunneling. For hard-rock TBMs, CSM and NTNU model have been widely used for prediction of disc cutter wear and penetration rate. But in case of soft-ground TBMs, the wear evaluation and the excavation performance have not been studied in details due to the complexity of the ground behavior and therefore few testing methods have been proposed. In this study, a new soil abrasion and penetration tester (SAPT) that simulates EPB TBM excavation process is introduced which overcomes the drawbacks of the previously developed soil abrasivity testers. Parametric tests for penetration rate, foam mixing ratio, foam concentration were conducted to evaluate influential parameters affecting TBM excavation and also ripper wear was measured in laboratory. The results of artificial soil specimen composed of 70% illite and 30% silica sand showed TBM additives such as foam play a key role in terms of excavation and tool wear.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.1343-1349
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• 2010

This paper presents the behavior of the soil based on the Gap Parameter during the Shield TBM tunnel excavation in sandy soil. This study reproduced the tunnel before and after the excavation according to the diameter of the tunnel, water ratio and depth to execute a Scaled Model Test and analyzed the behavior change of the upper soil. As a result, tunneling after for soil stress decreased was similar in all the Case. In addition, the soil stress decreased was in water ratio increases.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.67-76
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• 2006

For a hydro power plant project, the headrace tunnel having a finished diameter of 3.3 m was constructed in volcanic rocks with well-developed vertical joint and high groundwater table. The intake facility was located 20.3km upstream of the powerhouse and headrace tunnel of 20km in length and penstock of 440m in height connected the intake and the powerhouse. The typical caldera lake, Lake Toba set the geology at the site the caving of the ground caused tension cracks in the vertical direction to be developed and initial stresses at the ground to be released. High groundwater table(the maximum head of 20bar) in the area of well-connected vertical joints delayed the progress of tunnel excavation severely due to the excessive inflow of groundwater. The excavation of tunnel was made using open-shield type TBM and mucking cars on the rail. High volume of water inflowraised the water level inside tunnel to 70cm, 17% of tunnel diameter (3.9m) and hindered the mucking of spoil under water. To improve the productivity, several adjustments such as modification of TBM and mucking cars and increase in the number of submersible pumps were made forthe excavation of severe water inflow zone. Since the ground condition encountered during excavation turned out to be much worse, it was decided to adopt PC segment lining instead of RC lining. Besides, depending on the conditions of the water inflow, rock mass condition and internal water pressure, one of the invert PC segment lining with in-situ RC lining, RC lining and steel lining was applied to meet the site specific condition. With the adoption of PC segment lining, modification of TBM and other improvement, the excavation of the tunnel under severe groundwater condition was successfully completed.