ABSTRACT
Since 1980s, urban developments in many cities in China have been experiencing continuous growth and expansion. Therefore, it is necessary for the developing cities to have efficient and economic urban civil infrastructure systems to accommodate the traffic demand with rapid growth. Because of shortage of land resources, subway system is an obvious solution to meet the traffic demand and to minimize the impact on the existing traffic during construction. Shield tunneling is one of themost popular tunnelingmethods for the construction of subway tunnels in soft soil ground. During construction of shield tunnel in soft ground, ground deformation will be induced and the surrounding soils will act on the shield lining segments. Therefore, tunnel lining plays very important role to support the excavated space and engineers have to carry out tunnel lining design very carefully with consideration of using appropriate models and design methods.
