Study on Determination of Proper Pillar Width in Road Tunnel Design Stage

As the design of the pillar width (PW) of the parallel tunnels in downtown area, in which are located in plains zone with deep alluvium compared with mountain tunnels, is directly related with pre-compensation payment and costs of the underground area, it has to be planned as to keep minimum distance while securing the stability of the parallel tunnels. Although PW of downtown road tunnel in Korea is standardized as 1.5D(D: diameter of the tunnels), PW sometimes has to be reduced within 1.5D to adjust the tunnel lines to the city plan in the cases of the inlet and outlet of the tunnels. In this paper, the design and the analyses of optimum PW of the NATM type road tunnel in the downtown area are introduced. The relationship among the tunnel line planning and underground compensation fee, and ground characteristics are evaluated. In the determination of PW distance, the numerical analyses of underground road tunnels were performed, including the use of the strength decrease method and strength/stress ratio method. In the cases of inlet and outlet part of the tunnels where the stability of the pillars is poor due to contiguous construction of the parallel tunnels, the reinforcement methods are recommended for securing the stability. Numerical verification was performed for the reinforcement proposed.