Effect of cutterhead configuration on tunnel face stability during shield machine maintenance outages

Owing to long-distance advancement or obstacles, shield tunneling machines are typically shut down for maintenance. Engineering safety during maintenance outages is determined by the stability of the tunnel face. Pressure maintenance openings are typically used under complicated hydrogeological conditions. The tunnel face is supported by a medium at the bottom of the excavation chamber and compressed air at the top. Owing to the high risk of face failure, the necessity of support pressure when cutterhead support is implemented and a method for determining the value of compressed air pressure using different support ratios must to be determined. In this study, a non-fully chamber supported rotational failure model considering cutterhead support is developed based on the upper-bound theorem of limit analysis. Numerical simulation is conducted to verify the accuracy of the proposed model. The results indicate that appropriately increasing the specific gravity of the supporting medium can reduce the risk of collapse. The required compressed air pressure increases significantly as the support ratio decreases. Disregarding the supporting effect of the cutterhead will result in a tunnel face with underestimated stability. To satisfy the requirement of chamber openings at atmospheric pressure, the stratum reinforcement strength and range at the shield end are provided based on different cutterhead aperture ratios.