ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Geohazards and Georisks
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1710441
Research on advanced support and deformation control technology of high geostress soft rock tunnel
Provisionally accepted
- 1Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China
- 2Chengdu Surveying Geotechnical Research Institute Co., Ltd. of MCC, Chengdu 610023, P.R China;, Chengdu, China
- 3Key Laboratory of Advanced Technologies of Traffic Tunnel, Ministry, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China;, Chengdu, China
- 4Sichuan Jiaotou Design Consulting Research Institute Co., Ltd. Chengdu 610041, P.R. China, Chengdu, China
- 5Broad vision Engineering Consultants, Kunming, Yunnan Province, 650041, China, Kunming, China
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A reasonable advanced support system is crucial for ensuring stable excavation in tunnels with weak surrounding rock. This study aims to address the problems of instability, large deformation, and prolonged construction period in the sidewalls of tunnel faces in plateau high-geostress carbonaceous slate tunnels in western mountainous areas. Based on lithology analysis and creep tests, we propose enhanced over-head pre-support, rapid initial support closure, and increased steel arch stiffness, validated via numerical modeling and field tests. Results show that compared to no forepoling (Case I), Cases II–V reduced deformation by 17%, 21%, 44%, and 46%, respectively. The additional arch over-support improves stability and reduces sidewall deformation. The combined "arch-wall over-support + HW175 steel arch + 6m anchors" system shortened initial support formation from 20 to 12 days. These findings support the design of active-passive support systems for high-stress weak rock tunnels and offer insights for similar projects.
Keywords: Advance support, Deformation control, creep characteristics, High geostress, Soft rock tunnel
Received: 22 Sep 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Peng, Liu, He, Wang, Wang, Li and Yan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tao Yan, yantao19820801@swjtu.edu.cn
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