Model test on cutterhead-soil interaction during shield tunneling and its theoretical model

Abstract

This study aims to develop a rational theoretical model for cutterhead-soil interaction. The cutterhead-soil interaction mechanism is divided into two components: the cutting action of the cutter on the soil and the extrusion of the cutterhead on the soil. By enhancing the Mckyes-Ali model, we analyze and deduce the force state of the cutter during shield tunneling, obtaining a calculation method for determining the force on the cutter. Additionally, we conduct an in-depth analysis of the extrusion effect of the cutterhead on the soil during shield tunneling, utilizing the fundamental solution of the Kelvin problem. Based on these theoretical calculations, we validate the tunneling thrust and cutterhead torque of the shield using our self-developed multi-functional large-scale shield tunneling test platform. The test results demonstrate that the tunneling thrust and cutterhead torque derived from the established cutterhead-soil interaction model in this paper are relatively close to the experimental monitoring values. This provides a theoretical foundation for establishing reasonable shield tunneling loads.

Keywords

Shield machine / Cutterhead / Tunneling load / Model test / Interaction

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xiang Shen: Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization. Dajun Yuan: Supervision. Dalong Jin: Methodology. Xiangsheng Chen: Supervision, Funding acquisition. Weiping Luo: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology. Yuansheng Peng: Writing - review & editing. Kai Duan: Data curation.

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 gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52378404 and 52108377), Foundation for Basic and Applied Basic Research of Guangdong Province, China (Grant No. 2023A1515010060), and Open Project Foundation of the Key Laboratory of Urban Underground Engineering of Ministry of Education, China (Beijing Jiaotong University) (Grant No. TUL2023-03).

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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