Frictional analysis of pipe-slurry-soil interaction and jacking force prediction of rectangular pipe jacking

Predictive model and formula of jacking force has been well-established for circular pipe jacking in the past decades. However, the frictional mechanism of pipe–soil–slurry and jacking force prediction of rectangular pipe jacking has not well been understood. Nowadays, the rectangular pipe jacking is widely used, because of its over 20% larger effective usable area than that of circular pipe as underground facilities, with the same cross-sectional area. Nevertheless, the corresponding prediction models of thrust of rectangular pipe jacking are lacking. In order to further understand the frictional mechanism of slurry rectangular pipe jacking, five classical analytical calculation models have been proposed, considering the pipe–soil–slurry interaction, and prediction formulas are obtained. Then, 3D finite difference method was introduced to estimate the jacking force by using FLAC3D. Finally, three case studies have been carried out to validate the proposed models. The results show that the numerical and theoretical results have good consistency, and what is more, the measured jacking force can be well included within the ranges of analytical models presented in this paper, which can improve the thrust prediction of rectangular pipe jacking.