The effect of pore water pressure on tunnel face stability

Summary The kinematic approach in combination with numerical simulation is used to examine the effect of pore water pressure on tunnel face stability. Pore water pressure distribution obtained by numerical calculations using FLAC3D is used to interpolate the pore water pressure on a 3D rotational collapse mechanism. Comparisons are made to check the present approach against other solutions, showing that the present approach improves the existing upper bound solutions. Results obtained indicate that critical effective face pressure increases with water table elevation. Several normalized charts are also presented for quick evaluation of tunnel face stability. At the end of the paper, the influence of anisotropic permeability on tunnel face stability is also discussed, showing that the isotropic model leads to an overestimation of the necessary tunnel face pressure for anisotropic soils. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.