Numerical Modeling of the Strata Deformation During Tunnel Excavation Based on Discrete Element Method

The construction of transportation infrastructure is transferring from ground to underground, which could evacuate the urban traffic and is also the future trend of the expansion of our cities. The cobble stratum brings about many technical problems in the underground engineering. Based on the calibration test and macroscopic mechanical characteristic curve, the microscopic calculation parameters of particle flow code simulation used for cobble strata in Urumchi were determined. According to establishing the numerical model of pebble tunnels using double-side-drift method, both the ground deformation and force chain evolution were analyzed for the tunnels using subsurface excavation method. This manuscript presented the differentiation of influence on ground deformation in cobble stratum under different excavation stages, the influence extent was ranked as follows, upper bench > double-side-drift > lower bench; the result of numerical simulation test was compared with the field monitoring data, proving that it is reasonable to adopt the particle flow code to simulate the excavation of pebble tunnels, and the research result could be provided for reference for the similar engineering.