Computationally efficient simulation in urban mechanised tunnelling based on multi-level BIM models

The design of complex underground infrastructure projects involves various empirical, analytical or numerical models with different levels of complexity. The use of simulation models in current state-of-the-art tunnel design process can be cumbersome when significant manual, time-consuming preparation, analysis and excessive computing resources are required. This paper addresses the challenges connected with minimising the user workload and computational time, as well as enabling real-time computations during the construction. To ensure a seamless workflow during design and to minimise the computation time of the analysis, we propose a novel concept for BIM-based numerical simulations, enabling the modelling of the tunnel advance on different levels of detail in terms of geometrical representation, material modelling and modelling of the advancement process. To ensure computational efficiency, the simulation software has been developed with special emphasis on efficient implementation, including parallelisation strategies on shared and distributed memory systems. For real-time on-demand calculations, simulation based meta models are integrated into the software platform. The components of the BIM-based multi-level simulation concept are described and evaluated in detail by means of representative numerical examples