Tunneling in Difficult Ground

by
Dr. Muhammad Zubair Abu Bakar
 Introduction
• Tunneling in difficult ground could mean any tunneling where it is difficult
simply because you are not using the proper method for that particular
type of ground.

• What I mean by tunneling in difficult ground, are tunneling techniques that

can and are being applied over and above the normal use of rock bolting,
shotcreting and steel sets.

• Difficult ground can be:

 very soft ground, ground that runs like sand or mud,
 ground that squeezes due to tremendous tectonic pressures,
 ground that chemically swells,
 or ground that is a total sheared mess of rubble.
 it might also be another old caved tunnel or mine that you have to tunnel
through,
 or a buried ancient waste dump that you have run into.

• But what is important is to find the most economical and safest way to
tunnel through it.
 Ground Preconditioning Techniques
 There are numerous methods to precondition the difficult
ground before you ever try to tunnel through it.
• Dewatering the area;
• ‚Freezing the ground mass;
• ‚Compensation grouting;
• ‚Permeability grouting;
• ‚Vertical jet grouting;
• ‚Umbrella Methods;
 Drilling and grouting;
 Horizontal Jet grouting;
 Concreted Pilot Tunnels;
 Pipe Jacking;
 Driving a series of small lined or concreted tunnel around what will become
the new opening.
 Driving small drifts in the area of the perimeter of the future opening and
prestressing the zone, which will minimize the roof tension in a large chamber.
• A few very basic rules of ground control laid down by Dr. John
Reed, considered as the “father of practical rock mechanics” in the
U.S.A.
– If you know that the ground is going to be very difficult to tunnel
through and you have a chance to stabilize it in some way before
opening the ground, while it is still in an equilibrium condition, do it;

– ‚ Do what ever you can to keep the heavy ground intact and from
moving, even slightly when you open it;

– ‚ Try to find ways to reinforce the rock and still use the strength of the
rock in place as much as you can (Remember, reinforced rock will
probably be stronger than any steel and concrete that you can put under
it.);

– ‚ Get the reinforcing in place before you make the opening if you can: if
not get it in place as soon as possible after you make the opening.

• Some of these rules may seem nearly impossible, like reinforcing

the rock before you open it, but if you will use your ingenuity, it
can be done. Example:
• I (Dr. Richard Bullock) was the Mine Superintendent for the
Viburnum Mines in 1965. We were driving a 24 ft. wide by 16
ft. high drift to the south No. 28 Mine and knew that we had
to pass through the Conway fault. This is a major fault that
runs through the Viburnum area. I don’t remember the
displacement, but I do remember that the rock was a broken
mess within the fault zone for about 20-25 feet. St. Joe had
tried to cross it in earlier in other places without success. The
fault zone was a bunch of large and small boulders, with some
clay and dirt in-filling. The Mine Captain, the Division
Superintendent, and the Division Manager all wanted to
design, fabricate and install huge steel sets as we went
through it. I wanted to try to cross it by using a system that I
had dreamed up. I was afraid that unless we did something
to stabilize the ground before we got into it, we could never
get these huge steel sets in place without getting somebody
killed. The answer, was to do both.
• What I wanted to do and we did was to set up at the edge of the fault and
with our rock drills, using 1-1/4 inch extension drill steel, drill on 12 to 18
inch spacing, drill holes 30 to 40 feet long about two to three foot above
the future back, and leave the extension drill steel in the holes. Back in
those days, we knew of no way of grouting through the drill steel, but we
drilled other holes and grouted the fault zone in a normal manner. Then we
proceded to drive under our “umbrella” of boulders, now pinned and held
in place by the maze of drill steel. We were able to drive through it without
incident, by using standard point anchored rockbolts in the boulders and
holding chain link fencing pinned to the back. We did go ahead and install
the big steel sets, but they didn’t really do any good. Unfortunately, I never
did write up the method that we used to cross the Conway fault. To me it
just seemed like a logical method of doing it, by placing active support
which would immediately take a load, rather than relying on a passive
support that let everything move down on it before taking a load. I didn’t
realize how unique a solution that it had been. If I had written and
published an article on it, I might have been known of as the father of
“tunneling under an umbrella” for it was the Japanese that first published
there ideas of using steel pipe to form an umbrella in about 1970 and are
known as the originators of “umbrella tunneling”.
 Freezing Ground
• Ground freezing is very old and reliable, well tested method of keeping the
water out of an underground development, and stabilizing the ground at
the same time.
• For well over 150 years it has been practiced. Since the first recorded use of
ground freezing in South Wales in about 1862, the basic principle has been
improved and developed along with modern technology.
• Main Advantages
– No matter how many pieces must be joined together, freezing the
ground forms a consolidated block, cemented together by the
bonding effects of ice to form a fairly stable rock like material;

– Other forms of ground support, such as rockbolts, WWF and/or

shotcrete can if needed be used in conjunction with freezing;

– It is environmentally acceptable, no matter where it has to be

applied.
• The general rule of thumb is that for depth down to about
250 feet, you should freeze a thickness about 6 feet larger
than the opening diameter; down to a depth of 450 feet,
the diameter should be about 8 feet and below that, 10
feet larger than the tunnel or shaft that you are trying to
develop.

• In some rare cases, you may not need to freeze completely

around the tunnel. In one tunnel in Switzerland (Pearse,
1993) they only froze a canopy over the top for ground
stabilization where a slurry shield passed through
fluvioglacial gravels.
 Case Study (Pearse, G., 1990, Hannover Underground,
World Tunnelling, Feb., pp. 28-29.)

• Tunnel in a mixed layers of fill material from beds of clay, silt, sand and
gravel, only about 65 feet below the surface, in Hannover, Germany.
• Two twin tunnels were driven that were very close to each other, but one
was kept slightly behind the other.
• They would work at drilling out their freeze pipe holes, placing the pipes (42
m long), and then freezing one tunnel. Then when it was frozen using their
650 kW plant pumping -40°C brine, they would move over to the other
tunnel, and freeze it.
• Meanwhile in the previously frozen tunnel, they excavated it with a backhoe
type loader. They placed shotcrete directly onto the frozen ground,
probably using air entrained shotcrete.
• The length of the tunnel that had to be frozen was 251 m, and the volume
of frozen ground 3600 m³. To drill the pipe freezing holes, they had to
widen out the last part of their tunnel in order to have room to drill the
next round of holes parallel to the new tunnel to be frozen.
• Finally an inner lining of water tight concrete was placed completely around
the tunnel, on top of a PE (polyethylene) film.
 Case Studies: (Harvey, S., 1988, Ground Freezing, The
First Option, World Tunnelling, Dec., pp. 327-328.)
• A 2.44 m tunnel being driven beneath the River Medway in
Kent, England intersected and unforeseen sand and shell filled
fissure, saturated with and recharged with water from the tidal
estuary approximately 1 km away.
• Obviously it was impossible to dewater. Treatment of this
fissure was carried out from the face by drilling a series of radial
freeze holes fanned out to form a cone shape.
• Liquid nitrogen was used as the refrigerant and was delivered
to the face in rail-mounted containers. The exhaust gases were
collected and vented to the atmosphere by separate vent
columns. Tunneling through the fissure was then completed
without further incident.
• The Du Toitskloof road tunnel in South Africa had a
cross-sectional area of 121 m² constructed through
decomposed granite.
• A number of previous attempts with much smaller
tunnel resulted in mud runs causing serious delays
and abandonment. The use of ground freezing
allowed the tunnel to be constructed full size
without incident.
• At Runcorn near Manchester, England, two 3m dia. Tunnels
were required to link a newly- built 9 m dia. secant piled
access chamber to ancient shafts of brick and cast iron some
13 m away. They were constructed within purpose designed
horizontal cylinders of frozen ground.

• A platform was installed in the chamber to support horizontal

drilling equipment. The drill rig was then successively aligned
and preset to a circular pattern. Drilling for, and placement
of, the horizontal freeze tubes then took place with no loss of
ground nor excessive water volumes.

• A combination of using ammonia compressors, and

refrigeration of liquid nitrogen in some difficult sections to
get to, completed the successful freeze job.
 Compensation Grouting
• This is nothing more than pumping cement grout
into an unconsolidated zone of broken rock or
gravel to give the ground more strength.
• It is a matter of drilling holes, grouting, and then
repeating the process until you are sure that you
have consolidated by grout all of the material that
you need to tunnel through.
• Tunneling in cities, under buildings may use a lot of
consolidation grouting.
• As a tunnel is excavated the ground undergoes stress
relief (unless the face is sufficiently pressurized), and
this results in ground loss towards the face with
associated ground movements developing at higher
levels.
• After the tunnel heading has passed beneath, the resulting effect
is a transverse settlement trough of the classical Gaussian
distribution.
• The magnitude of ground movement resulting from tunneling is
expressed in terms of volume loss/ground loss, defined as: the
area of transverse settlement trough expressed as %age of the x-
sectional area of the tunnel excavation.
• Compensation grouting is applied externally to the
tunnel.
• Grout is injected between the tunnel and building
foundations to compensate for ground loss and stress
relief caused by tunnel excavation. Grout injection is
undertaken simultaneously with tunneling in response
to detailed observations, the aim being to limit building
settlements and distortions to specified amounts.
• A key element of compensation grouting is continuous monitoring.
• The amount and location of compensation grouting should be determined
by the observed behavior of both the ground and the structure in question
and should be directed at ensuring that pre-determined limits on
acceptable behavior are not approached.
Compensation grouting from surface
Compensation grouting from adjacent gallery
Compensation grouting from pilot gallery
Compensation grouting from shafts
 Compensation Grouting Techniques

• Compaction Grouting
• Fracture Grouting
• Pressure Filtration/Intrusion Grouting
 Compaction Grouting
• Injection of stiff, high viscosity grout into the ground
which in general will form an approximately
spherical bulb.
• This causes densification (or recompaction) of the
surrounding ground and displacements to
compensate for the settlements occurring below
the point of injection.
• Normally a cement based grout is used with
sufficient silt sizes to provide plasticity together
with sand sizes to develop friction.
• The grout does not generally enter soil pores but
remains in a homogenous mass.
 Fracture Grouting
• Injection of low viscosity grout at pressures
sufficient to split open the ground and form fissure
planes along which the grout flows.
• This is normally undertaken in clay soils.
• Injection volumes have to be strictly limited such
that the extent of the grouting effect can be
controlled.
• Involves penetration of grout over comparatively
greater distances; it may generate pore pressures in
the clay which dissipate with time (Undrained).
 Pressure Filtration/Intrusion Grouting
• The injection of a fluid grout with a high solids
content.
• The grout is designed to bleed rapidly so that the
solids are deposited close to the point of injection
and water is lost into the surrounding ground
(Drained Process).
• The technique is applicable to granular soils which
have sufficient permeability to allow the grout to
bleed.
 Advantages
• In fracture and
intrusion grouting the
grout is relatively fluid
and can be injected
through sleeved grout
tubes known as tubes a
manchette (TAMs).
• In case of compaction
grouting, the grout is
usually too viscous to
be injected through the
small holes of a TAM
and therefore larger
diameter grout tubes
need to be installed in Rubber sleeves (manchettes) cover each injection
port and serve as one-way valves that open during
the ground. injection and collapse onto the ports after injection
Case Study (Wallis, Shani, Paris Metro, World Tunnelling,
Oct., pp. 325-330.)
• For tunnels under the City of Paris, the ground was
apparently very weak and need consolidation grouting.
• They did not report the dimensions of the opening, but
stated that for removing 17,500m³, they pumped
13,500 m³ of cement and chemical grout, through
83,000 m of injection drill holes.
• Then they used 7,500 linear m of Swellex bolts and
1300 m³ of shotcrete. After all this was done from two
small (what appears to be about 18 feet wide) tunnels,
The remaining portion of the station chamber was
excavated.
Case Study: (Mair, R. and D. Hight, 1994, Compensation
Grouting, World Tunnelling, Nov., pp. 361-365.)
 Permeability Grouting
• This is where you are grouting to reduce the
permeability of the material that you want to
tunnel through to shut off the water. This is by far
the most common grouting method.
• In soil, sealing grouting can be used, for example, to
form an impervious blanket above a compressed air
tunnel drive to prevent blowouts reaching the
surface.
• Waterproofing of the entire x-section of the future
tunnel can also be carried out by high-pressure or
jet grouting from surface.
 Vertical Jet Grouting
• When you have a very weak, or unconsolidated
material that will probably run when you put an
opening in it, and you want to drive a tunnel through it,
the Vertical Jet grouting may be the answer.
• When jet grouting is done horizontally, it then is
classified as umbrella “jet spiling”, but it is still the same
idea.
• Vertical Jet grouting entails drilling holes from the
surface (or another level) to give you complete
coverage of the area that you will be tunneling through,
considering that the jet grouted columns will be about
6 feet in diameter, and they must overlap like a honey
comb.
• First the hole is drilled, then the jet starts injecting,
and in some cases mixing the grout with the
material, in other cases, it removes it completely
and replaces it with grout. In all cases, you end up
with strong column of cement grout that stand side
by side, and form a solid block of concrete to tunnel
through.
Three types of Jet Grout injectors
Case Study: (Burke, Jack, Success at Islais Creek, 1995, World
Tunnelling, Jun., pp N9-N14.)
• This project was done within San Francisco on the eastern side
of the peninsula. At one time before the 1900's, this area was
under water. Over the years it become a land fill/garbage dump
and was then covered with decent land fill. The City lined out a
transport sewer through this area.
• When a geotechnical investigation was done, they found out
that there was artificial loose sand and rock, rubbish, organic
garbage, old piles and even sunken ships to tunnel through.
• In addition, the natural bay mud, which is a plastic silty clay.
The answer was to use vertical jet grouting and excavate the
tunnel with a roadheader shield. The extensive jet grouting is
shown in next slide. The tunnel was then cut by a
roadheader/shield.
 Umbrella Methods
• As you know story about the Conway fault in
Viburnum, the umbrella method must have
something to do with putting some sort of a stable
umbrella over the area where you need to drive a
tunnel.
• Also, very similarly, we saw earlier that compaction
grouting can form an umbrella over an area where
you will drive a tunnel, but that doesn’t add the
strength to the ground as much as the methods
that we will discuss now.
 Drilling and Grouting
• The method of drilling holes into the ground and leaving the
drill steel in place, and then grouting through the drill steel has
now become common practice in many civil projects. There is
also a system of Grouted Spile Anchor which is illustrated in
next slide.
• This system is a forepoling system for soft to medium hard
ground where spiles (anchors) are placed above and around the
next round to be excavated. In this case however, the system
has a special anchor rod which replaces the perforated boring
tube which is used to bore the hole and inject the grout.
 Horizontal Jet Grouting (Sometimes called Jet Piling)
• Just as you can drill and perform jet grouting vertically, you can do a
similar thing horizontally.
• In the case of horizontal jet grouting, the diameter is usually more in
the range of 18 to 24 inches in diameter, rather than 48 to 60 inches.
• A complete umbrella arch must form above where you are going to
drive the tunnel. Sometime in shallow areas, or close to or as part of
the portals, a combination of horizontal and vertical jet grouting is
done.
• Also, if the top excavation is protected by horizontal jet grouting,
which will be followed by bottom excavation that also needs
protection, then within the tunnel vertical jet grouting along the
floor/rib line jet grouting can be done.
 Concreted Pilot Tunnels
• This is still another more extensive system of
developing an umbrella over, in these cases very large
tunnels or chambers.
• This particular job was a part of the French Channel
Tunnel where they had to develop a crossover chamber
180 m long, 26 m wide and 20 m high. While most of
the excavation was not in particularly bad ground
conditions (blue chalk marl) the shear size of the
chamber called for such an extensive concrete
structure.
• The longitudinal small tunnels, once filled with
compacted unreinforced concrete, interlocked to form
a complete arch. This arch is designed as the primary
lining of the completed chamber.
• This system of
building an umbrella
over a future
chamber was first
used at the Mount
Baker Ridge tunnel
construction job in
Seattle.
• In this case, a
complete 360° of 24
- 8.33 ft.dia. drifts
were driven and then
filled with concrete.
Thus forming a
complete concrete
shell, that could be
excavated without
causing subsidence.
 Pipe Jacking (Pipe Roofing)
• The Korean and Japanese were clearly the developers of this system. It
normally is used to support an arch umbrella over the tunnel excavation.
This is fairly common practice in Germany as well as Korea and Japan.
• Usually when the
Germans use it, it is for a
fairly shallow and short
distance tunnel under a
railroad.
• Furthermore, when the
Germans have used it
according to the
literature, the pipes are
driven touching each
other, but they are not
interconnected.
• When the Koreans and
Japanese use, they have
pipes made up that
actually attach to each
other.
• When the Germans do
it, they seem to
“hammer” the pipes
into place, where as the
Asians seem to jack the
pipes into place.
Case Study: (Anonymous, 1995, “Rammed Pipe Roof Success”
World Tunnelling, Mar., p.50.)
• A new road was needed under a vital railroad
between Neustadt and Wurzburg. Normal
excavation or hydraulic thrust boring was estimated
at several million DM. Potsch, a very large
European contractor gave them a bid for
performing the excavation by a method of “Pipe
Roofing” that was 4 million DM less than the other
methods.
• The method used hydraulic pipe “Ramming
Hammers”. They proposed to install 44, 12.5 m
long pipes , 1220 mm in diameter, with a wall
thickness of 20 mm in a complete 360° circle .
• To avoid any deformation to the embankment, they
lined the entry and exit embankment with vertical
steel sheet piling. They used a 600mm diameter
Tarus Grundoram hammer, which applied 2000 t of
thrust. They pushed off of an I-beam arrangement
that was welded to the steel piling. They were able
to ram the pipes into place, taking 2-6 hours per
pipe.
• The steel piling inside the pipe was then cut and
pulled away and the tunnel then excavated. This
was followed by a road bed that was placed and
compacted within the tunnel at the desired grade
• Reading Assignments:

• Ground Freezing: Three pages, P1-1 & P1-2;

• Compensation Grouting: Five pages, P2-1
through P2-5;
• Aosta Extravaganza: Six pages, P3-1 through
P3-6.