Seismic Damage Analysis of Box Metro Tunnels Accounting for Aspect Ratio and Shear Failure

Abstract

We performed a series of inelastic frame analyses for single, double, and triple reinforced concrete box tunnels to investigate their unique damage mechanisms. We focused our interest on the influence of the aspect ratio of box tunnels and the occurrence of a shear structural failure. This is a follow-up study of Lee et al. (2016), where damage analyses of box tunnels with an aspect ratio of unity were performed by considering only the flexural failure. We show that only flexural failures occurred in single box tunnels, whereas shear structural failures were produced at the inner column for double and triple box tunnels. The inner column failed in shear after flexural plastic hinges were formed at all four outer corners, and might cause a brittle collapse. A structural collapse was not observed in single box tunnels. An increase in the aspect ratio was demonstrated to cause associated increment in the seismic resistance. The moment and shear strains at which plastic hinges formed an increase by up to 5% and 20%, respectively. We proposed revised damage indices (DIs) corresponding to three damage states for single box tunnels, where DI is defined as the ratio of the elastic moment to the yield moment. The collapse damage state and corresponding DI for double and triple tunnels are newly presented.