Design and Analysis Techniques for High Head Tunnel Plugs

摘要

The- Rondout-West Branch Tunnel supplies approximately half of New York City's drinking water and is leaking. A bypass tunnel is being designed around the leakage area. When complete, the bypass tunnel project will have three permanent concrete plugs, two of which will be installed by removing the existing lining from the leaking tunnel. This paper discusses plug design, with an emphasis on leakage-free criteria, shear key design, and construction considerations. The design was optimized by computational modeling, which provides insight into the plug behavior. The plug design is unique because of the schedule challenges and extreme hydrostatic loading condition of 36 bar.