FE modelling of excavation and operation of a shield tunnelling machine / FE-Modellierung des Ausbruchs und Betriebs einer Schildvortriebmaschine

A shield tunnelling machine is driven forward by applying mechanical jack forces behind the shield machine tail while excavating the soil in front of the shield machine with its cutting face. In this study, the advance and excavation processes of the shield tunnelling operation are modelled using the finite element method in order to investigate the effect of these construction processes on the ground response. An excavating finite element is introduced, which models the disturbed soil in front of the cutting face. The operation of shield advance and of soil excavation is simulated using the finite element re-meshing technique at each time step of the analysis. The proposed modelling techniques of shield tunnelling construction are applied to simulate a deep and a triple-face shield tunnelling project in Tokyo and the numerical results are compared with the field measurements.