ABSTRACT
Definition of operational range for the design and execution of TBM built tunnel is essential, in order to guarantee personal safety, neighbourhood integrity, and top quality at the end. In this article is firstly introduced a methodology, emphasising on the relation between standards context and justifications to produce. Several improvements of existing analytical methods are presented, particularly about front stability. Regarding this existing bibliography on this thema, we show that our new approach is better adapted to realistic situations (circular tunnel, multilayer case, drained or undrained conditions), theoretically more robust (new choice for lateral coefficient pressure, comparison with well-known limit analysis that provide theoretical bounds), and is geometrically coherent with failure mechanism observed in situ or in laboratory. Then, we present an application to real historical case.
