Seismic Interaction between a Lined Tunnel and a Hill under Plane SV Waves by IBEM

This paper investigates the dynamic interaction between a lined tunnel and a hill under plane SV waves using the indirect boundary element method (IBEM), with the displacement and stress characteristics of the system presented in frequency domain. The IBEM has several unique advantages such as reducing calculation dimension, automatically satisfying the infinite radiation condition, etc. The numerical results indicated that the dynamic response of the tunnel–hill system is strongly dependent on incident wave characteristics, geometrical and material properties of the lined tunnel, as well as the topography of the hill. For a dimension ratio between the hill and tunnel of less than 10.0, the lined tunnel has large amplification or deamplification effect on the dynamic response of the hill. Correspondingly, the hill also greatly amplifies the displacement and stress concentration of the tunnel especially in the lower-frequency range, due to the complicated interference effect among the reflected waves and diffracted waves induced by the tunnel and hill. Also demonstrated is that the displacement and stress amplitude spectrums highly depend on the incident frequency and the space location, and there exist multiple peaks and troughs in the spectrum curve with the peaks usually appearing in the low-frequency range. Thus, for the seismic safety assessment of a hill slope or hill tunnel in practice, the dynamic interaction within the tunnel–hill system should be taken into consideration.