Modified stiffness approach to predict deformation of building induced by tunnelling

The urban tunnel construction will cause ground movement and the deformation or even damage of the nearby buildings or other structures. It’s very common in practice that the stiffness of structure may be ignored in the settlement prediction and damage assessment of building because of the nature of the complexity of tunnel-soil-structure interaction. Based on the study of 29 sets of settlement profiles measured from Jubilee Line Extension project, London, an observation is put forward that the settlement profiles of the building also can be fit very well by the Gaussian equation in case of using a larger trough-width parameter K influenced by the structural stiffness. Thus an empirical relationship between the parameter K and the shear stiffness of the building is proposed which can be used to predict the trough parameter according to the building stiffness, and a ‘Modified Stiffness Method’ is suggested. Compared with the numerical approach, the present method is a simple and efficient way that considered the result of the complicated tunnel-soil-structure interaction effects. The effectiveness of this method is evaluated by the monitoring data from Beijing.