Permeability Variations and Its Effect on Stress and Deformation around Water Pressure Tunnels: FEM Analysis

Computing the change of stresses and deformations around water pressure tunnels due to the internalloading has been discussed in several papers until now. In recent researches, analytical relations werepresented considering the effect of seepage flow through pores and fractures in the rock mass. To makethe model more realistic, this paper presents a finite element approach that also takes into account theeffect of stress-dependent permeability of the rock mass and lining. The main contribution of this paper isfor developing a computer subroutine in MATLAB which is provided for mesh generation, seepageanalysis and stress-strain analysis. Various stress dependent permeability functions can be applied by thecode. To investigate the effect of permeability change on the results, two examples of lined and unlinedpressure tunnels are analyzed with the provided program.

کلیدواژه ها:

pressure tunnel ، finite element ، seepage ، permeability