Experimental study on shield tunnel seepage control via microbially induced calcite precipitation

Abstract

This study investigated the potential use of microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) to prevent seepage in shield tunnels with the aim of decarbonizing tunnel engineering. An apparatus was developed to conduct scale model tests to evaluate the effectiveness of using MICP for shield tunnel seepage control. To understand the MICP process and its induced change in seepage flow rate, a series of 1-g physical model tests were conducted using the designed apparatus to investigate the effect of injection methods, grouting pressure, and calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) content produced as well as its distribution on the reduction of seepage flow rate for thephysical tunnel model with different backfills behind its linings. The variation law of the pore pressure near grouting hole of the tunnel segment was also revealed. Results indicated that when the amount of CaCO₃ precipitation in sand-grout mixtures was 10.53% and 10.12%, water seepage flow rate for thephysical tunnel modelwith Fujian- and coarse-sand-grout backfill respectively reduced by 94.3% and 73.8% of their respective initial values, and S-wave velocity increased by 89.6% and 84.9% for Fujian- and coarse-sand-grout mixture, respectively. The grouting pressure needed to be controlled within a certain range to prevent the unstable CaCO₃ precipitates from being washed away. The testing results also showed that the one-phase injection method was more effective in controlling seepage water into a shield tunnel. Based on the findings of the scale model tests, some vital considerations and suggestions were presented on the use of MICP approaches for shield tunnel seepage control.

Keywords

Shield tunnel seepage control / Microbially induced calcite precipitation / Seepage flow rate / Pore pressure / Wave velocity

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Shuai Zhao: Data curation, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Methodology. Shi-Fan Wu: Data curation, Investigation. Dong-Ming Zhang: Methodology, Supervision. Hong-Wei Huang: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing - review & editing. Jian Chu: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

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 financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52130805) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2021YFF0502200) are gratefully acknowledged. The first author would also like to appreciate the scholarship from China Scholarship Council (Grant No. 201906260208) for his study in Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

Data availability

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

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