The Plastic Zone of Tunnel Surrounding Rock under Unequal Stress in Two Directions Based on the Unified Strength Theory

For the deficiencies that the existing calculation theory for the Plastic Zone of Tunnel Surrounding Rock (PZTSR) does not consider the effect of the intermediate principal stress σ 2 and interaction between the surrounding rock and support structure on the PZTSR under unequal stress, the Unified Strength Theory (UST) for the rock is adopted to replace the often used Mohr-Coulomb (M-C) strength criterion to consider the effect of σ 2 on the PZTSR. Meanwhile, the interaction mechanism between the surrounding rock and support structure is also considered in the proposed model. Finally, the effect of the initial elastic displacement of the surrounding rock, stiffness of the support structure, and the coefficient b of the intermediate principal stress on the plastic zone is discussed. The results show that the PZTSR will increase nonlinearly with increasing the initial elastic displacement of the surrounding rock, and when it increases to a certain value, its increase extent will be much obvious. With increasing the stiffness of the support structure, the PZTSR will gradually decrease nonlinearly, but the decrease extent is not very much. With increasing b , the PZTSR will decrease; namely, σ 2 can improve the stress condition of the surrounding rock and reduce the PZTSR.