ABSTRACT
Mechanized tunneling in densely populated urban areas with shallow overburden and cohesionless soil is a great challenge for TBM tunneling. Surface settlement, damage to surface buildings, and structures, and aborting the cutter head inspection due to excessive air loss are the key challenges. This paper illustrates the field hurdles that were tackled during cutter head intervention and practical measures taken to address them as per site feasibility. In addition, the excessive surface settlement observed during TBM mining leads to damage to the buildings. Therefore, the TBM mining parameters and two-component backfill grouting provisions were modified suitably as per site observations, and subsequently, the surface settlement was noticeably reduced.
