AJRM as basis for design and construction of more than 70 km of tunnels of the Railway Project Stuttgart‐Ulm

The tunnels of the railway project Stuttgart‐Ulm are located in sedimentary rock of the Keuper Formation, the Black Jurassic, the Brown Jurassic and the White Jurassic formation. The two longest tunnels are excavated by tunnel boring machine over most of their length. The remaining tunnels, which the authors are involved in, are excavated by conventional tunnelling. All tunnels are designed on the basis of the AJRM‐method. This method is based on an anisotropic, elasto‐viscoplastic model for jointed rock and corresponding FE‐software, which has been extended to seepage and swelling. The method has been applied to practical projects for the last 40 years. By means of rock mechanical test programs and back‐analyses of projects in a variety of rocks, the reliability of the predictions is quite high and the application leads to safe and economic solutions.