Abstract

After the economic boom in Iraq-Kurdistan the infrastructural reorganization began, based on the design of the highway and road network. The construction of the high number of tunnels is required because of the relief of the region. Our Hungarian team was responsible for the verification of the Iranian-designed Penjween tunnel from Zagros Mountains (and Darbandikhan tunnel) in 2013. Our checking and consultant work helped the Client (Kurdistan Region Ministry of Construction and Housing – Sulaymaniyah) to prepare the Tender for the tunnel construction. The Tender process has stalled since the war began in the spring of 2014 in Iraq as well. The goal of this paper is to represent one part from the Hungarian team’s checking issue, namely the geological site descriptions, drill core logging, laboratory results and the numerical modelling results. These investigations formed the background of final design of the Penjween tunnel. The paper introduces a methodology which provides an easy and a short manner for checking a tunnel design across an extended seismically active fault system and geologically very alterable rock masses. Due to the checking, we were spent a few days on the site around the tunnel trace. We have been carried out engineering geological mapping on the outcrops found out in the close region. During our investigations based on our experiences, finally we were verified the required rock support by the designer. Hence there was short time for the checking work we have used analytical methods beside the simplified numerical models to cover the whole tunnel length. The designer has applied only 2D numerical modelling, therefore similarly we followed this approach, combined with analytical methods but the final results were analysed also by using 3D numerical calculations (e.g. in case of the cross passages).

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