Water exclusion from tunnel cavities spanning a water table

Abstract

It is simply shown that the analysis giving the critical shape of tunnel cavities situated on a freely draining permeable substratum for water exclusion with vertical drainage through the saturated capillary fringe, can be extended to the situation where the cavities span a water table caused by an underlying water-bearing permeable substratum under pressure. It is noted that the analysis is the same for the groundwater seepage problem of water seeping to a water-bearing substratum under pressure from infinite ponded-water regions separated by a long island strip.