The Effects of Shallow Tunnels on Nearby Structures

Nowadays, underground structures play vital role in developing different countries. Such structures are constructed in many civil activities such as development of road and railways, subways, water, gas and sewage lines, underground subways, nuclear wastes land filling, fuel storage and military installations. With an appropriate drilling method being selected, instabilities created in tunnels may be controlled, the volume of maintenance systems required in structures may be decreased, and extra costs arising from it may be decreased as well. Excavation of surface tunnels may bring about changes on the surface and in the adjacent structures. Settlement on the surface and instabilities in adjacent structures as a result of stress induction are among the most important changes of this kind. Plaxis software has been used in the research to evaluate the technical parameters of tunnel such as tunnel diameter, tunnel depth from the earth surface, drilling method and distance from adjacent structures. Meanwhile it investigates the effects of urban tunnel drilling as lifelines on adjacent structures and render the results in the form of a diagram.