ABSTRACT
In this paper the main results of a numerical study on the shape of the surface settlement profiles related to shallow tunnel construction in cemented clayey soils are presented. The analyses were carried out under plane strain and undrained conditions, based on a constitutive soil model proposed recently in the literature. Despite the high non linear description of the mechanical behavior of the soil embedded in the model, only a slight improvement in the prediction of the settlement trough was obtained, especially when comparing the settlement profiles obtained from the numerical analyses with those predicted by the inverted normal (Gaussian) distribution form which reasonably matches most of the experimental data. The analysis of the results seems to indicate that an important role in producing differences between numerical predictions and observed performances is played by the three-dimensional nature of the problem.
