Abstract
Infiltration of pressurised foam into saturated sand has been investigated in a laboratory setup that provides a comparable hydraulic gradient as in real tunnels. It appears that the permeability of sand for foam decreases as FER of the foam increases until a limit FER (approximately 15 for the foaming agent and sand used in this experiment). For higher FERs the permeability remains more or less constant. It was found that a ‘dry’ foam (FER = 20) is not essential for formation of a low permeable layer in the sand, even a ‘wet’ foam (FER = 5) can form a low permeable layer. When the discharge is less than that corresponding to the drilling velocity of a TBM, there will be no foam spurt and consequently no zone with low permeability. Without a low permeability plastering at the tunnel face the pressure applied through the foam will be less effective to stabilize the face.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the scholarship funded by China Scholarship Council, the Mobility Fund of Ghent University, the University of Macau Research Fund MYRG2017-00198-FST and the Macau FDCT fund 193/2017/A3.
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Xu, T., Bezuijen, A., Zhou, WH. (2020). Pressure Infiltration Characteristics of Foam for EPB Shield Tunnelling. In: Duc Long, P., Dung, N. (eds) Geotechnics for Sustainable Infrastructure Development. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 62. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2184-3_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2184-3_29
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