Centrifuge study on behavior of raft foundation after tunnelling in soft clay

Abstract

Ground losses due to tunneling would induce settlement of nearby raft foundations. To study the change in behavior of the raft foundations over time due to tunnel excavation in soft clay, a series of centrifuge model tests were conducted. The results reveal that the raft stiffness has a significant influence on the development of the gap between the raft and the ground. The width of the gap beneath the flexible foundation would increase over time, leading to a further increase in tensile strain after excavation, whereas the gap for raft foundations with a large stiffness would reduce with time, causing a gradual decrease in tensile strain. The modification factor (MF) design approach is also evaluated with the test results and demonstrates that the MF design approach would underestimate the tensile strain of the flexible raft and provide a relatively conservative prediction for larger stiffnesses.

Keywords

Tunnelling / Raft / Clay / Deflection ratio / Centrifuge test

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.

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (Grant No. 23ZR1468500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51738010), and Singapore Housing and Development research grant on tunnel-foundation interaction (Research project number R-302-000-086-490).

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