Environmental impact of ground deformation caused by underground construction in China

Abstract

This paper is a review of the study of ground deformation caused by underground construction and the countermeasures to control the environmental impact of underground construction, mainly including deep excavation and tunneling, based on case histories and state-of-art researches in China during the recent decade. According to the mechanism of deformation due to underground construction and its environmental impact, the deformation features and controlling measures were categorized into three classes, i.e., the soil displacement due to stress field change in soil or volume loss caused by construction activities, the ground loss caused by water-soil loss, and large scale ground movement due to the global failure of braced deep excavation or tunnel triggered by local damage of structures or local failure of soil. Furthermore, for each deformation type, the environmental impacts were graded based on the influence magnitude of the excavation and tunneling. Finally, the principles and methods to control the effects of deep excavation and tunneling were summarized.