ABSTRACT
Alignment design in urban tunneling aims at selecting an optimal tunnel track satisfying various design specifications and safety constraints as well as considering the environmental and socio-economic impact. In this work, an interactive tunnel track design tool is proposed, which enables finding optimized tunnel alignments by considering the impact of the tunnel advancement on existing infrastructure as a design criterion. An advanced numerical simulation model based on the Finite Cell Method (FCM) is utilized to predict the damage to existing buildings, during the tunneling process. To enable interactive applications in real-time, the FCM simulation model is substituted by a model reduction technique based on Proper Orthogonal Decomposition and Radial Basis Functions (POD-RBF). The fitness function to be minimized in the optimization problem is the maximum principal strains in all existing buildings. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to solve the minimization task. Finally, the alignment optimization is demonstrated in a real-time manner within a software environment. In each optimization step, the current optimum tunnel alignment and the associated risks of damage to all existing buildings are visualized in the developed software package. The proposed and developed strategy can be used to improve the tunnel alignment decision-making as well as can be extended by incorporating multi-objective functions for the optimization of tunnel alignment design.
