Mutual influence mechanism between soft soil interlayers and shield tunnels under seismic action: Laboratory tests and numerical simulations

Abstract

Soft soil is widely distributed and has complex origins. Shield tunnels are inevitably constructed within soft soil interlayers, and under seismic action, tunnels may be subject to severe damages. On the basis of actual engineering, this study utilized dynamic triaxial testing to investigate the dynamic properties of soft soil. Using the PIMY constitutive model, the seismic subsidence characteristics of the soft soil were characterized, and a refined finite element model was established to study the mutual influence mechanism between the soft soil layer and shield tunnels via the open-source software framework OpenSees. The results demonstrate that soil exhibits a softening effect under dynamic loading; soft soil with better structural integrity is less prone to seismic subsidence; and the greater the inertial force acting on the soft soil, the greater the likelihood of settlement. Under seismic action, the presence of the shield tunnel exacerbates the settlement of the soft soil, as the surrounding soil experiences significant inertial forces from the tunnel structure, hindering drainage and accelerating the accumulation of pore water pressure; The soft soil itself has large deformation and displacement under the action of earthquake, which leads to the great stress, deformation, and displacement of the structure. The arch foot position of the tunnel is identified as the most vulnerable to damage.

Keywords

Soft soil interlayers / Shield tunnels / Seismic response / Numerical simulation / Influence mechanism

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xinwei Tang: Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Gaozhi Xin: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Software, Investigation. Danqing Song: Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Author agreement and acknowledgement

This work was funded by the Key Research and Development Projects of Guangdong Province (2019B111108001), China and the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2024A1515010045), China and the Basic Research Program of Jiangsu (BK20231217 and BK20220265), the independent research project of the State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building and Urban Science (2023ZB15), China the Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering Safety, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SKLGME023001), China and the Open Research Fund Program of the State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering (SKLGME-KF-2025-D-02), China. Appreciation is expressed to Assoc. Prof. Yichao Gao for their substantial support for the test data processing work of this work.

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