Explicit Approach for Reliability-Based Design of Lining Structures Subjected to Water Seepage Considering Spatial Correlation and Uncertainty

Abstract

With the rapid urbanization in this era, it has become an economic imperative to make use of underground space in many countries. Achieving long-term durability goals of lining structures is a challenging task to guarantee the normal serviceability of underground space, which may be affected by many threatening factors such as water seepage. In this paper, an explicit method is developed to guide the design of lining structure thickness against water seepage in a probability-based framework. For a two-dimensional surface, the mean value and variance of the average seepage scenario are first derived in a closed form, taking into account the spatial correlation and uncertainty of the lining structure thickness and water seepage depth. The gamma distribution is used to describe the probabilistic behavior of the average seepage scenario, based on which an explicit link is established between the lining structure thickness and structural failure probability. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the accuracy and applicability of the proposed method.