Cavity Location Method for Operational Metro Tunnels Based on Perturbation Theory

Disease in the liner back cavities of operational metro tunnels is alternately affected by groundwater environment, train cyclic load, and ambient environment conditions. Cavity disease is characterized by high levels of hiddenness and uncertainty; it also easily induces other tunnel diseases which can reduce the structure’s bearing capacity and degrade structural safety and stability throughout the tunnel. This paper proposes a novel cavity-locating method for operational shield tunnels, with special focus on single- and multiple-cavity diseases. Based on perturbation theory, dynamic behaviors (modal frequencies and shapes) of different cavity cases were obtained from an analytical model of the original tunnel structure. A modal strain energy cavity indicator (MSECI) was established to reveal the locations of both single cavity and multiple cavities. A typical shield tunnel was modeled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam on a Winkler foundation and evaluated to validate the proposed method. The perturbation theory appears to effectively characterize the dynamic characteristics of liner back cavities in metro tunnels. MSECI can be used to locate cavities accurately. This work may provide a valuable theoretical basis for the detection and analysis of tunnel cavity disease and other tunnel health-monitoring applications.