Design of cut-and-cover tunnel in seismically-active urban area: Presidio Parkway Replacement Project

Positioned alongside the north shoreline of San Francisco, the Battery Tunnel is one of the structures of Presidio Parkway which will connect the city streets through Presidio of San Francisco National Park to the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. The site is seismically active area and surrounded by the National Cemetery and historic battery structures. The design team came up with unique geometry to accommodate geometric constraints and numerous utilities. The soldier piles were selected as the temporary shoring system during construction to protect the marsh lands from interruption of ground water. As a “recovery route” designated by the California Department of

Transportation, accurate evaluation of seismic performance of the tunnel was warranted. To that end, nonlinear soil-structure interaction analysis as well as linear analysis was performed. The analyses not only confirmed that the structural design of the tunnel satisfies seismic design criteria for both temporary and permanent condition, but also showed the differences between linear and nonlinear analysis.