• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.183-198
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• 2021

The EPB (Earth Pressure Balanced) shield TBM method restrains the ground deformation through continuous excavation and support. Still, the significant surface settlement occurs due to the ground conditions, tunnel dimensions, and construction conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the settlement behavior with its influence factors and evaluate the possible settlement during construction. In this study, the analytical model of surface settlement based on the influence factors and their mechanisms were proposed. Then, the parametric study for controllable factors during excavation was conducted by numerical method. Through the numerical analysis, the settlement behavior according to the construction conditions was quantitatively derived. Then, the qualitative trend according to the ground conditions was visualized by coupling the numerical results with the analytical model of settlement. Based on the results of this study, it is expected to contribute to the derivation of the settlement prediction algorithm for EPB shield TBM excavation.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2021

In the design of a tunnel boring machine (TBM), the excavation efficiency of the equipment depends on the design of the cutter head, which is directly in contact with the ground. Especially, the allocation of disc cutter is crucial issue. Disc cutters can be divided into center cutter zone, inner cutter zone and transition cutter zone depending on where they are placed. Many studies have been conducted to identify optimal cutting conditions for face cutters. However, research to determine the optimal cutting conditions for the transition cutter has been relatively incomplete. In this study, to identify the optimal cutting conditions for the transition cutter, numerical analysis using discrete element method was performed, and the specific energy curve according to the angle between the transition cutters was drawn to find out the optimum cutting conditions. The results show that the angle between the transition cutters showing minimum specific energy in the transition cutter zone is 9°. Transition cutter zone was divided into three sections according to the slope angle of the transition cutter. It is also found that, the greater the slope angle of the transition cutter. This finding shows good agreement with the present design of transition cutter zone.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-60
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• 2021

Hydrogen is a next-generation energy source, and according to the roadmap for activating the hydrogen economy, it is expected that industries to stably produce, store, and transport of hydrogen as well as the supply of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be made rapidly. Accordingly, safety measures for accidents of hydrogen vehicles in confined spaces such as tunnels are required. In this study, as part of a study to ensure the safety of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in road tunnels, a basic investigation and research on the risk of fire and explosion due to gas leakage and hydrogen tank rupture among various hazards caused by hydrogen fuel cell vehicle accidents in tunnels was conducted. The following results were obtained. In the event of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle accidents, the gas release rate depends on the orifice diameter of TPRD, and when the gas is ignited, the maximum heat release rate reaches 3.22~51.36 MW (orifice diameter: 1~4 mm) depending on the orifice diameter but the duration times are short. Therefore, it was analyzed that there was little increase in risk due to fire. As the overpressure of the gas explosion was calculated by the equivalent TNT method, in the case of yield of VCE of 0.2 is applied, the safety threshold distance is analyzed to be about 35 m, and number of the equivalent fatalities are conservatively predicted to reach tens of people.

• 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.23 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2021

Hydrogen in hydrogen-electric vehicles has a wide range of combustion and explosion ranges, and is a combustible gas with a very fast flame propagation speed, so it has the risk of leakage, diffusion, ignition, and explosion. The fuel tank has a Thermally active Pressure Relief Device (TPRD) to reduce the risk of explosion and other explosions, and in the event of an accident, hydrogen inside the tank is released outside before an explosion or fire occurs. However, if an accident occurs in a semi-closed space such as an underground parking lot, the flow of air flow is smaller than the open space, which can cause the concentration of hydrogen gas emitted from the TPRD to accumulate above the explosion limit. Therefore, in this study, the leakage rate and concentration of hydrogen over time were analyzed according to the diameter of the nozzle of the TPRD. The diameter of the nozzle was considered to be 1 mm, 2.5 mm and 5 mm, and ccording to the diameter of the nozzle, the concentration of hydrogen in the underground parking lot increases in a faster time with the diameter of the nozzle, and the maximum value is also analyzed to be larger with the diameter of the nozzle. In underground parking lots where air currents are stagnant, hydrogen concentrations above LFL (Lowe Flammability Limit) were analyzed to be distributed around the nozzle, and it was analyzed that they did not exceed UFL (Upper Flammability Limit).

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.317-326
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• 2022

This research performed single fiber pull-out test to evaluate the effect between fineness modulus of cement composites and the fiber bond performance (bond strength and pull-out energy). A synthetic fiber (polypropylene) and a steel fiber (hooked ends type) were inserted in the middle of dog bone shape specimens which were designed with fine aggregates of F. M. 1.96, 2.69, 3.43. The experiment results showed bond strength and pullout energy of synthetic fiber are improved as fineness modulus of cement composites increases. It is considered that the frictional resistance between synthetic fiber and cement composite increases as fineness modulus of cement composite increases and consume more energy while pull out the fiber from cement composite. However bond performance of steel fiber which resist pull out by mechanical behavior is less effected on fineness modulus of cement composite. It is considered that the mechanical fixedness of hooked ends exerts a greater effect on the pullout resistance than the frictional resistance between the cement composite and the steel fiber so F. M. of fine aggregate has a relatively small effect on the pullout resistance with the steel fiber.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.341-353
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• 2022

Pipelines are buried in urban area, and the position (depth and orientation) of buried pipeline should be clearly identified before ground excavation. Although various geophysical methods can be used to detect the buried pipeline, it is not easy to identify the exact information of pipeline due to heterogeneous ground condition. Among various non-destructive geo-exploration methods, ground penetration radar (GPR) can explore the ground subsurface rapidly with relatively low cost compared to other exploration methods. However, the exploration data obtained from GPR requires considerable experiences because interpretation is not intuitive. Recently, researches on automated detection technology for GPR data using deep learning have been conducted. However, the lack of GPR data which is essential for training makes it difficult to build up the reliable detection model. To overcome this problem, we conducted a preliminary study to improve the performance of the detection model using finite difference time domain (FDTD)-based numerical analysis. Firstly, numerical analysis was performed with homogeneous soil media having single permittivity. In case of heterogeneous ground, numerical analysis was performed considering the ground heterogeneity using fractal technique. Secondly, deep learning was carried out using convolutional neural network. Detection Model-A is trained with data set obtained from homogeneous ground. And, detection Model-B is trained with data set obtained from homogeneous ground and heterogeneous ground. As a result, it is found that the detection Model-B which is trained including heterogeneous ground shows better performance than detection Model-A. It indicates the ground heterogeneity should be considered to increase the performance of automated detection model for GPR exploration.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.305-316
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• 2022

Hydrogen energy is emerging as an alternative to the depletion of fossil fuels and environmental problems, and the use of hydrogen vehicles is increasing in the automobile industry as well. However, since hydrogen has a wide flammability limit of 4 to 75%, there is a high concern about safety in case of a hydrogen car accident. In particular, in semi-enclosed spaces such as tunnels and underground parking lots, a fire or explosion accompanied by hydrogen leakage is highly likely to cause a major accident. Therefore, it is necessary to review hydrogen safety through analysis of flammability areas caused by hydrogen leakage. Therefore, in this study, the effect of the air velocity in the tunnel on the flammability area was investigated by analyzing the hydrogen concentration according to the hydrogen leakage conditions of hydrogen vehicles and the air velocity in the tunnel in a road tunnel with standard section. Hydrogen leakage conditions were set as one tank leaking and three tanks leaking through the TPRD at the same time and a condition in which a large crack occurred and leaked. And the air velocity in the tunnel were considered 0, 1, 2.5, and 4.0 m/s. As a result of the analysis of the flammability area, it is shown that when the air velocity of 1 m/s or more exists, it is reduced by up to 25% compared to the case of air velocity of 0 m/s. But there is little effect of reducing the flammability area according to the increase of the wind speed. In particular, when a large crack occurs and completely leaks in about 2.5 seconds, the flammability area slightly increases as the air velocity increases. It was found that in the case of downward ejection, hydrogen gas remains under the vehicle for a considerably long time.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.395-409
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• 2022

To overcome the limitation of conventional rock excavation methods, the excavation with abrasive waterjet has been actively developed. The abrasive waterjet excavation method has the effect of reducing blasting vibration and enhancing the excavation efficiency by forming a continuous free surface on the rock. However, the waterjet cutting performance varies with rock fracturing characteristics. Thus, it is necessary to analyze the cutting performance for various rocks in order to effectively utilize the waterjet excavation. In this study, cutting experiments with the high pressure waterjet system were performed for basalt and granite specimens. Water pressure, standoff distance, and traverse speed were determined as effective parameters for the abrasive waterjet cutting. The cutting depth and width of basalt specimens were analyzed to compare with granite results. The averaged cutting depth of basalt was shown in 41% deeper than granite; in addition, the averaged cutting width of basalt was formed by 18.5% narrower than granite. The results of this study are expected to be useful basic data for applying rock excavation site with low strength and high porosity such as basalt.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.411-429
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• 2022

Instrumentations are essential in NATM tunnels, however measuring instruments are installed and applied without performance verification procedures due to insufficient research on methods, procedures, regulations, etc. to verify the reliability of the measuring instruments. In this study, domestic and foreign regulations relating to the verification and calibration of instruments were investigated and necessities for accreditation standards were proposed. In order to identify the causes of the defects, an external inspection was performed on rock bolt stressmeter and rod extensometer, which are measuring instruments with relatively complex structures. For verifying the performance of these instruments, verification devices were developed that can load step-by-step and the causes of defects were identified in measuring instruments of nine domestic manufacturers. Through the performance test, a number of measuring instruments were found to be defective. It was important to test the performance of the instruments in the state of a finished product and accordingly performance inspection methods and procedures were proposed. The results of this study are expected to help preparing related regulations for verifying instrument performance and selecting instruments in the field.