ABSTRACT

Estimation of stability of tunnels is a long-standing subject of interest. In conjunction with analytical approaches and field observations, numerical approaches provide insight into the safety factor and its corresponding failure mechanism. This paper adopts an upper bound procedure associated with the cell-based smoothed finite element method and second-order cone programming to estimate the seismic stability of tunnels. In simulations, soil behaviour is assumed as the Mohr-Coulomb material and its plasticity deformation increment is obeyed the associated flow rule. Variations in tunnel depths, distance between two tunnels were performed to investigate the dependency of safety factors and failure mechanisms on the tunnel geometry. Moreover, changes in the magnitude of seismic acceleration were intensively created to examine the seismic effect on tunnel stability.