ABSTRACT
With the rising demand for infrastructure construction and the development of underground space exploration, there has been a great upsurge in utility tunnel construction which causes a great attention about the construction equipment – rectangular TBM in recent years. This paper presents the development of rectangular TBM application in utility tunnel and analyzes the existing structures to specify its structural features and working principle. An optimized jacking force formula is introduced in the process of TBM design. In addition, it also summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of rectangular TBM from a series of application cases. Furthermore, the development trend and application prospect are also proposed in this paper.
