A process-based forecast tool for tunnelling-induced groundwater drainage and land subsidence
Details
- Period: 2024-08-01 – 2028-08-31
- Budget: 5,000,000 SEK
- Funder: Trafikverket
- Type of funding: Project Grant
Description
To enhance the transport capacity and accessibility, many new railway/road lines with long-distance tunnels passing through dense urban areas have been developed or planned by Trafikverket. One crucial issue to tackle in these underground construction projects is tunnelling-induced groundwater drawdown and land subsidence, which can cause damage to nearby infrastructures and lead to negative economic, environmental, and social impacts. Thus, it is of central importance to develop the best possible predictive tools to make timely forecasts of the ground settlement behaviour, so that relevant measures can be immediately taken to mitigate the associated risks. The purpose of this project is to develop a process-based predictive modelling framework that can realistically represent the ground condition as encountered in tunnel projects, dynamically incorporate the measurement data that will become progressively available during the construction, mechanistically compute the coupled hydro-mechanical processes in geological media, and accurately forecast the spatiotemporal evolution of groundwater drawdown and land subsidence. A case study will be conducted based on the ongoing West Link project in Gothenburg to extensively test this forecast tool for forecasting groundwater drawdown and ground settlements. The project outcomes will enhance the productivity in the infrastructure sector by (i) achieving safe, sustainable, and cost-effective tunnelling in uncertain geotechnical engineering conditions, (ii) supplying quantitative information regarding subsidence risks for the planning, design, and construction of underground transport facilities, and (iii) minimising the impacts on urban environments via dynamically adapted construction and effectively implemented mitigation.
Cooperation partners
Trafikverket