Seismic design for large-scale cut-and-cover tunnels

The cut-and-cover tunnel described in this paper pertains to a large-scale underground station with a length of 400 m, a cross section of 25 m height, and 25 m width in soft ground. . One part of the top slab of the station will be required to serve as the foundation for an elevated viaduct structure, and the entire structure will be a very complicated to be built in a seismically high risk area, and in view of the fact that the structure will be an important train station, there will be many passengers, and seismic safety will be an important design task. It has been the practice to consider underground structures as highly safe against earthquakes, but in 1995 in the South Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake struck for the first time in the world. The cause for this disaster was due to the fact that the underground structure was located where relative displacement occurred in the soils and shear deformation took place during the earthquake. The capability of the reinforced concrete center column to resist the shear forces was exceeded. In view of the calamity experienced by this catastrophe, in this report seismic safety could be satisfied to secure ductility for large-scale earthquake loads. The important factors in the seismic design are 1) to understand the non-linear seismic behavior of structures with high-degree redundancy supported by the ground, and 2) to secure the seismic safety as a whole structure.