Assessment of Subsurface Explosion caused by Tunnel Construction in Urban Areas

Abstract

Nowadays, tunneling in urban areas is a common activity for a variety of transportations such as subways, water supply, lifelines andsewers that may require blast operations. The characteristics of stress waves of the blast are quite different from earthquake waves. The blast waves are usually of high frequency content, short duration, equality of amplitudes in horizontal and vertical directions and large range of magnitude from ten to thousands of the gravitational constant. However few papers can be found to discuss about the effect of soil characteristics under blast loading. In this paper, numerical models based on finite element method is used to simulate stress wave at soil sites under explosion effect in an underground linear chamber and then characteristics of the ground movement and the explosion effect on soil-structure interaction is analyzed. In this study, numerical results of area deformations in every region are compared together and parameter sensitivity of the soil is analyzed. Results presented in this paper can be used in a more detailed assessment of ground motion effect on structures.