3D Finite Element calculations of shallow tunnels
Bellow you will find an animation of a 3D FE simulation of the excavation process.
According to a realistic excavation scheme following the NEW AUSTRIAN TUNNELLING METHOD, the following steps are shown:
- Excavation (advance) of one meter of the upper part of the crown within one hour.
- Application of shotcrete in this section within 2.5 hours.
The above two steps are repeated four times.
- After an advance of four meters, the remaining part of the crown was excavated.
Afterwards the excavation in the bench was carried out in an similar way.
The calculations were done with ABAQUS 5.8-10. For the soil different constitutive models can be used (e.g. classical Mohr-Coulomb yield criterion or Hypoplasticity). For the shotcrete time dependent linear elastic behavior was assumed. The modell has 106.200 d.o.f. (8814 elements, 30819 nodes) and the 129 steps were running within an total CPU time of 122. hours on an silicon graphics o200 (524 MB RAM).
By clicking at the projector you can either download the animation in avi format or play it (depending on the plug-ins you have installed).
FE-Modell during the excavation process.
