Ground Deformations Above a

Large Shallow Tunnel Excavated Using

Jet Grouting

adapted from Proc. ISRM Regional Symposium
EUROCK 2004 and 53rd Geomechanics Colloquy. Edited by W. Schubert,
pp.155-160. VGE, Essen.

by
Steven Coulter & C. Derek Martin
Dept. Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, T6G 2G7













Plan view of the Aeschertunnel located near Zurich, Switzerland
The Aeschertunnel, a large noncircular shallow tunnel, was excavated using a jet grout arch for
primary excavation support where glacial moraine was encountered. Surface deformations were
monitored during jet grouting and as excavation of the top heading and bench proceeded.
Observations of the construction process and the surface settlements suggest that the jet grouting arch
limited the volume loss to 0.35%, similar to that achieved with slurry shield and EPB TBM. The
surface settlement trough was considerably narrower than achieved using conventional tunneling
methods. Numerical back-analysis suggests that the narrow settlement trough is created by localized
shear bands induced by the over-pressure associated with the jet grout process.

In soft ground tunneling the construction of large non-circular tunnels is particularly challenging. The
construction method must provide worker safety as well as meet stringent design requirements. In an
urban environment one of the design requirements is that the construction method must control
surface settlement within specified tolerances. In Europe, a popular construction method for large
non-circular tunnels utilizes sub-horizontal jet-grout columns to form a protective fan (vault) of
cemented soil ahead of the excavation face. J et-grouting has an advantage over many other
construction techniques in its ability to be used in varying ground conditions and tunnel geometric
configurations.
The process of jet-grouting is a high energy process that replaces the soil with soil-cement slurry and,
after hardening creates a 0.6m diameter column of soil-cement. As a result, in shallow tunnels the jet-
grouting process may induce surface settlements that exceed the design requirements.












Aeschertunnel Tunnel Portals
The Aeschertunnel in Canton Zurich, Switzerland, was excavated with a top heading (75m
2
) that
utilized 35 sub-horizontal jet-grout columns for primary excavation support. The tunnel was designed
to accommodate highway traffic with a completed cross sectional area of 135m
2
. The tunnel was
excavated in glacial till (a relatively dry medium-dense silty sand) at a depth that caused surface
settlements.







Dimensions for the
completed Aeschertunnel


Tunnel Construction and Observations
The Aeschertunnel is comprised of parallel two-lane highway tunnels approximately 2 km long each,
passing under two chains of hills approximately 8km southwest from Zurich city center. The tunnel
leading to the northwest is called the Basel axis and the one to the southeast is the Luzern axis. The
tunnels were driven using a heading and bench technique in rock and glacial till, with up to 70m of
overburden.
The heading construction technique in the in the till used a protective jet-grout vault installed ahead of
the tunnel face in order to provide improved excavation support. The discussion here focuses on the
observations during excavation of the tunnel heading using the jet-grout technique in the glacial
deposit.
Glacial soil properties
Approximately 1km from the southeast portal, the tunnel reenters glacial till as it passes through the
valley between the chains of hills. In this region the till that is overlain by a sandy surficial deposit
approximately 7.5m thick, and extends to about 37m below the ground surface where it is underlain
by bedrock. The overburden is approximately 15m above the tunnel crown in the area where surface
settlements were recorded.
The till consists of a lightly coloured clayey sand and silt, with gravel and isolated boulders. This soil
is hard and fairly homogenous. The till was observed to be dry during the geological investigation and
the tunnel excavation, although there were water bearing lenses silty sand and gravel. The elastic
modulus of the till was 80 MPa, and a dry density between 22 kN/m
3
and 23 kN/m
3
(Fries 2000). The
effective cohesion is between 5 and 20 kPa, and the friction angle is between 32
o
and 35
o
.
Jet-grout construction technique
The vault was formed with the installation of 39 jet-grout columns. The columns had a specified
diameter of 600mm with a spacing of 450mm between the boreholes at the tunnel face to ensure
overlapping columns.

Figure 1: Tunnel heading excavation showing jet-grout column numbering



The excavation technique used for the heading in the glacial till can be summarized in the following 3
steps.
1. Installation of the jet-grout columns to form the protective arch. These are inclined 11
o
away
from the tunnel axis to form a series of partially overlapping cone sections. Each column is
13m long with 2m of overlap between stages, resulting in an 11m advance per stage. This
stage takes approximately 3 to 5 days.
2. The heading is excavated and the temporary support above the invert is installed in 3 stages
for a 5.5m advance. The temporary liner is welded wire mesh and steel lattice girders and
400mm of shotcrete. The invert is closed with welded wire mesh and 200mm of shotcrete.
3. Step 2 is repeated to complete an 11m stage. Following this there is the installation of
200mm of shotcrete on the tunnel face.

Typically the crown was jet-grouted first, as this was thought to produce the least amount of ground
heave. The average time to install a single jet-grout column took 40 minutes from the completion of
the previous column, with a set of, on average, 9 columns per day generally installed within a 6-hour
period. The jet-grout installation was generally performed in a serial manner, i.e. the top set of
columns 14 to 26, and then in a serial manner for 27 to 39 and then 1 to 13 (the sides). Each stage
including excavation and installation of the preliminary liner stages typically took 8 days to finish.







Jet grouting drill-rig in the top-heading
Jet grout over-pressurization
There were many observations that suggest that the jet-grout installation procedure combined with
the geological conditions induced pressures that exceeded the overburden pressure. During the
installation heave was noticed at the surface and grout was observed at the surface in several
locations, up to 10s of meters horizontally from the tunnel axis.
Within the tunnel there was also evidence that the jet-grout procedure caused over-pressurization.
The temporary shotcrete lining on the tunnel face collapsed during jet-grout installation, likely due to
grout pressures building up at the tunnel face. The wooden borehole plugs intended for the retention
of the grout were sometimes expelled and projected when adjacent jet-grout columns were being
installed. On one occasion the grout pressures were sufficient to cause some steel lattice girders in the
previous stage to buckle.

Finite Element Analysis
The displacement field due to tunneling is a 3-dimensional problem, i.e. the displacements are a
function of face advance. While it is recognized that a 3-dimensional analysis may be required to
examine the complete stress-strain response, several researchers have shown that 2-dimensional
analysis can be used successfully to back-analyze the tunnel induced settlement trough (Gioda &
Locatelli 1999). Two dimensional methods have been used to determine the effect of construction
procedures such as the time dependent hardening of shotcrete, the use of compressed air, slurry
pressures and earth pressure balance tunnel boring machines, the use of grouting to improve the soil
properties, and the effect of liner installation sequence on the liner loads (Swoboda 1979).
The 2-dimensional analysis must employ techniques that approximate the 3-dimensional face effects.
Two techniques are commonly used; (1) the stress reduction method, and (2) the stiffness reduction
method.
This modelling described in this paper used the stiffness reduction method to account for the
3-dimensional nature of the tunnel displacements. In the application of the stiffness reduction method,
the soil within the excavation zone is assigned a lower modulus of elasticity and the ground is allowed
to deform to a new equilibrium. When the liner is installed, the final excavation is performed and the
liner becomes fully stressed.
Modeling procedure
The numerical back analysis used the finite element program, Phase
2
version 5.04, from Rocscience.
The back analysis procedure using Phase
2
was to vary the model parameters starting from a set of
base parameters as to get the best agreement between the observed surface settlements and the
modeled settlements.








Phase
2
model showing the jet grout columns. Note the fine mesh created by the
automatic mesh generator in Phase
2
in the vicinity of the jet grout columns.




The model used 14 stages to simulate the effects of construction procedure and timing (Table 1). The
installation of the jet-grout columns was modeled with 5 stages, grouting the crown of the tunnel first
and then alternating from side to side. An installation time of 5 hours per set and a setting time of 19
hours were used in the modeling to determine the grout material parameters.
Table 1: Finite element model staging.
Stage Jet-grout Grout Excavation Stage Jet-grout Grout Excavation
Installation pressure area Installation pressure area
1

8 Low
2 Soften (S1)

9 Set 4, 30-37 High
3 Set 1, 16-22 High

10 Low
4 Low

11 Set 5, 1-8 High
5 Set 2, 23-29 High

12 Low
6 Low

13 Soften (S2)
7 Set 3, 9-15 High

14
Excavate &


install liner

The modeling varied 7 parameters using a multivariate grid search. The multivariate grid searched at
two points per variable for each iteration and the best result of each iteration was evaluated by the
errors between the observations and the model and the trough width. The variables evaluated were the
peak grout pressure (Pp), residual grout pressure (Pr), the first and second softening (S1 & S2), the
Poissons ratio, Youngs modulus (E), and the peak and residual friction angle of the till ().
The elevated grout pressures were due to a portion of the injection pressures of 40 MPa acting on the
soil over the extent of the jet-grout column. This modeling approach used grout pressures that varied
from 200% of overburden (approximately 0.7 MPa) upon installation of the jet-grout (Pp), to 90% of
overburden (approximately 0.3 MPa) when the grout had set (Pr). This residual grout pressure is
assumed to include volume loss due to bleeding, shrinkage and the hydration process.
The excavation area had the stress state reinitialized to zero and its elastic modulus reduced to allow
for convergence prior to the installation of the jet-grout (S1) and the liner (S2). The initial softening
was applied to match the settlement profile induced by the approaching tunnel prior to the installation
of the jet-grout.
The soil model used a residual friction angle less than the peak friction angle as till is an over-
consolidated soil and usually displays a strain weakening behavior. For this modeling the residual
friction angle was assumed to be 75% of the peak.















Figure 2 : Tunnel profile showing material properties used in the finite
element model. The text in bold indicates the back-analyzed values for
those parameters.

Over-consolidated soils usually display strain localization when sheared beyond their peak strength.
A limitation of FEM in predicting tunnelling induced settlements may be due to the soil models in the
FEM being unable to effectively represent this localization of plastic strains as the formation of the
shear bands is very dependent upon the discretization of the finite element mesh (Sterpi 1999). Finer
meshes produce realizations of narrower shear bands and the shear bands will tend to form in a
direction parallel to the sides of the elements (Zienkiewicz, Young & Pastor 1995). To reduce the
influence of the formation of yield bands on the mesh size, a fine mapped rectangular mesh made up
of 3 noded triangular elements was introduced above the tunnel crown. This region contained 17750
elements.
The grout properties used were varied from stage to stage as it hardened. The strength and stiffness
were determined from the laboratory testing (Coulter 2004). The bedrock was assumed to be a rigid
boundary as its Youngs modulus was approximately 30 times that of the till. The ratio of horizontal
to vertical stresses (Ko) was assumed to have a value of 0.5 based upon the topography near the
tunnel. The values for the modeling parameters are shown on the tunnel profile in Figure 2.
Modeling results
The modeling results were able to match the observed settlements as shown in Figure 3. The jet-
grouting process yielded centerline settlements of 5mm and heaving of 5mm. Heaving during each
jet-grout stages ranged from 1.5 to 3.5mm of maintained heave. The use of a lower residual jet-grout
pressure caused the maintained heaving to be less than the peak observed during the jet-grout column
installation.






Figure 3: Modeled surface settlement in the stages where the residual grout pressure is applied. The graph
on the far right shows the final modeled settlement profile and the observed settlements. Measured
settlements were available only for the final settlement profile

During the application of high grout pressures during the installation of the first set of jet-grout
columns in stage 3, a small amount of plastic straining developed at the shoulders of the jet-grout
columns 16 and 22. As shown in figure 4, the installation of the second set of columns in stage 5
resulted in extensive element yielding, with a shear band 1 to 2 elements thick. The soil to the right of
the shear band is forced upward by the high grout pressures and the soil to left is allowed to settle.
The installation of the third set in stage 7 resulted in extensive yielding, similar to the yielding in stage
5, with a similar heaving to the left of the shear band and settlement above the tunnel crown.
The installation of the fourth and fifth sets of jet-grout in stages 9 and 11 resulted in limited yielding
at the bases of the jet-grout arch and the interfaces of adjacent sets of jet-grout columns. The
excavation and installation of the liner only resulted in limited yielding of the till below the invert.
There was no yielding of the jet-grout columns or the liner.
The narrow shape of the modeled settlement trough is due to the yielding of the soil above the jet
grout arch. Without plastic deformations the elastic response of the soil results in a settlement trough
wider than the observed width. The volume losses associated with the tunneling with the jet-grout
method yielded volume losses of 0.35%, similar to EBP and slurry shield tunnel boring machines.


Figure 4 Shear band formation (yielded elements) in finite element model stages 5, 7 and 14.


Conclusions
During the construction of the Aeschertunnel the installation of jet-grout columns as primary
excavation support resulted in heaving of the surface due to the jet-grout columns becoming
pressurized. This tunnelling method resulted in a settlement trough much narrower than found with
traditional tunnelling methods, and lead to very low volume losses, in the range of 0.35%.
The back-analysis using Phase
2
suggested that the only way to produce such a settlement trough was
to include a strain-softening soil model, which is consistent with this soil type, and jet-grout over
pressurization.
Strain localization occurred at all mesh sizes using both a uniform and a graded triangular mesh.
With increasing refinement of the finite element mesh, the strain localization formed narrower bands
that extended further towards the surface. This strain localization, caused by grout pressures 200% of
overburden pressures, was responsible for creating the narrow settlement trough.
The result of the shear band formation leads to a zone of soil between the shear bands to move
downward plastically in relation to the soil on the outside of the shear bands. This mode of
deformation provides a sufficiently narrow final modeled surface deformation that can capture the
narrow settlement trough that was observed during the Aeschertunnel construction.


References
Coulter, S. 2004. Influence of tunnel jet-grouting on ground deformations at the Aeschertunnel, Switzerland.
MSc thesis, University of Alberta
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Schweizerischen Gesellschaft fur Boden- und Felsmechanik, Zurich, Societe Suisse de Mechanique des Sols
et des Roches, pp. 33-38, in German.
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1407-1425.
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