Centrifuge tests on tunnel-building interaction in liquefiable soil

Relatively shallow and light underground structures, such as urban tunnels, may run through liquefiable sand deposits. In urban area they are likely close to the foundations of buildings and easily interact with them during earthquakes. The reciprocal influence of a tunnel and an adjacent building in presence of soil liquefaction has been investigated in this work. For this purpose, centrifuge tests were carried out at the Schofield Centre of the University of Cambridge (UK) on a reduced scale model of box-type section tunnel. In a first test a model tunnel was embedded in a liquefiable layer of sand. In the second one, a model building was added and founded in the proximity of the tunnel. The study contributes to the wider topic of the resilience of urban environment to natural hazards, and to earthquake-induced soil liquefaction specifically