Face Stability Analysis of Rectangular Tunnels Driven by a Pressurized Shield

With the development and utilization of underground space, some new tunnel forms are emerging, such as the rectangular tunnel, double tunnels, treble tunnels and so on. The aim of this paper is to determine the collapse face pressure of a rectangular tunnel driven by a pressurized shield. The calculation is based on the upper-bound method of the limit analysis theory. A translational kinematically admissible failure mechanism consists a sequence of truncated rigid cones are considered for the calculation schemes. The numerical results obtained by the calculation are presented.