Reliability Assessment of Tunnel Support Systems Using a Probability-Based Method

The present study developed a program which can assess the reliability of tunnel support systems based on a probability-based method. The developed program uses FLAC2D as a solver, and can automatically execute all the processes, associated with numerical and probabilistic analysis. Since a numerical analysis, which models the ground, requires a significant calculation time, it is actually impossible to apply simulation-based methods to probabilistic assessment on the reliability of tunnel support systems. Therefore, the present study used a point estimate method, which is efficient for probabilistic analysis since the method can significantly reduce the number of samples when compared with the simulation-based method. The developed program was applied to a tunnel project, and the results were compared with those through a deterministic approach. From the comparison, it was identified that a probabilistic approach can quantitatively assess the reliability of tunnel support systems based on probability of failure and can be used as a tool for decision making in tunnel support designs.

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