Ductile support design / Zur Auslegung duktiler Ausbauten

Tunnelling in weak ground under high overburden normally results in very high displacements and if a stiff support concept is applied, this requires a very high load-bearing capacity. This has again and again proved to be both an uneconomical and an unsafe concept, leading to extremely high lining thickness and brittle failure behaviour. In order to avoid such problems, ductile support systems have been developed, which allow controlled deformation of the ground and plastic dissipation of excessive stresses accumulated in the lining. For the efficient design of such systems, the aspects of spatial and time-dependent development of displacement, time-dependent properties of shotcrete, and the load-displacement behaviour of the ductile elements have to be harmonized.
The requirements posed on a ductile support system are presented, together with simple principles for the determination of ground behaviour boundaries when the application of a ductile support becomes imperative. Recent developments of ductile elements for use with shotcrete linings are described, and their general performance and efficiency are reviewed. A method for calculation of shotcrete stresses using absolute displacement monitoring data is presented, allowing the identification of both inefficient (lining stresses too low and strongly variable in the cross-section) or unsafe (lining stresses almost exceeding the strength) concepts and optimisation during construction.