Numerical Simulation on the Response of Adjacent Underground Pipelines to Super Shallow Buried Large Span Double-Arch Tunnel Excavation

The excavation of a shallow buried tunnel may cause stress redistribution in surrounding rock, and cause deformation, damage, and even destruction of adjacent underground pipelines. The land part of the Haicang undersea tunnel in Xiamen of China was a super shallow buried large span double-arch tunnel. Its construction was restricted by both underground excavation safe and adjacent pipeline protection. Multiple groups of working conditions were designed considering the relative position of pipe and tunnel, pipeline and tunnel construction parameters. Numerical simulation was used to study the influence of pipeline horizontal distance, buried depth, pipeline diameter, pipeline wall thickness, pipeline shape, pipeline material and excavation method on the response of adjacent underground pipelines. The results show that the relative position of pipe and tunnel, and the construction method of the double-arch tunnel have a great influence on pipeline deformation. Pipeline material, pipeline diameter and excavation method have a great influence on pipeline stress. The construction method was the key factor affecting the stress and deformation of the pipeline. The three-step reserved core soil method can effectively control the stress and deformation of underground pipelines. The research results can provide a reference for similar projects.

Estimating Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus Contents of West–East Grassland Transect in Inner Mongolia Based on Sentinel-2 and Meteorological Data

Estimating the carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) contents of a large-span grassland transect is essential for evaluating ecosystem functioning and monitoring biogeochemical cycles. However, the field measurements are scattered, such that they cannot indicate the continuous gradient change in the grassland transect. Although remote sensing methods have been applied for the estimation of nutrient elements at the local scale in recent years, few studies have considered the effective estimation of C, N, and P contents over large-span grassland transects with complex environment including a variety of grassland types (i.e., meadow, typical grassland, and desert grassland). In this paper, an information enhancement algorithm (involving spectral enhancement, regional enhancement, and feature enhancement) is used to extract the weak information related to C, N, and P. First, the spectral simulation algorithm is used to enhance the spectral information of Sentinel-2 imagery. Then, the enhanced spectra and meteorological data are fused to express regional characteristics and the fractional differential (FD) algorithm is used to extract sensitive spectral features related to C, N, and P, in order to construct a partial least-squares regression (PLSR) model. Finally, the C, N, and P contents are estimated over a West–East grassland transect in Inner Mongolia, China. The results demonstrate that: (i) the contents of C, N, and P in large-span transects can be effectively estimated through use of the information enhancement method involving spectral enhancement, regional feature enhancement, and information enhancement, for which the estimation accuracies (R2) were 0.88, 0.78, and 0.85, respectively. Compared with the estimation results of raw Sentinel-2 imagery, the RMSE was reduced by 3.42 g/m2, 0.14 g/m2, and 13.73 mg/m2, respectively; and (ii) the continuous change trend and spatial distribution characteristics of C, N, and P contents in the west–east transect of the Inner Mongolia Plateau were obtained, which showed decreasing trends in C, N, and P contents from east to west and the characteristics of meadow > typical grassland > desert grassland. Thus, the information enhancement algorithm can help to improve estimates of C, N, and P contents when considering large-span grassland transects.

Coaction of Wind and Rain Effects on Large-Span Hyperbolic Roofs

Rainfall is often accompanied by strong winds. The large-span roof structure has a low height, its surrounding turbulence is high, and the wind speed changes greatly. The effects of coaction of wind and rain on the roofs cannot be ignored. Wind-driven rain (WDR) is an oblique movement phenomenon of raindrops generated by wind flow. Four types of hyperbolic roofs, that is, square, rectangular, circular, and elliptical, are selected as the objective to study the wind-driven rain by CFD simulation. Effects of wind direction, wind speed, and rainfall intensity on the WDR are analyzed. Pressure distribution of four types of hyperbolic roofs under coaction of wind and rain is obtained. The results are compared with those from the wind action only. The roofs are partitioned to obtain the coaction of wind and rain pressure of the four large-span hyperbolic roofs with different shapes under the most unfavorable working conditions. The results show that the average pressure coefficient of the roof surface increases with the increase of wind speed and rainfall intensity. The reference value of the average pressure coefficient of wind-driven rain on the surface of the roof is given, which provides a reference basis for the design of wind-driven rain on similar hyperbolic roofs.