Tunnel Damage Resulting from Seismic Loading

Correlation of ground motion to observed tunnel damage has largely been based on estimates of ground motion rather than observations and measurements. In an effort to provide a data set that included both measured ground motions and documented tunnel response, an experiment was designed and fielded 0.5 km from a recent underground nuclear explosion (UNE) which had a body wave magnitude, mb, and a Richter local magnitude, ML, of 5.0. The data obtained in this experiment are summarized in the paper. The discussion centers on the applicability of the results of this experiment to the design of underground facilities for a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada