Rock Breaking Performance of TBM Disc Cutter Assisted by High-Pressure Water Jet

A high-pressure water jet can break rock efficiently, which is of great potential to overcome the problems of a tunnel boring machine (TBM) in full-face hard rock tunnel digging, such as low digging efficiency and high disc cutter wear rate. Therefore, this paper presented a new tunneling method that is a TBM coupled with a high-pressure water jet. The rock failure mechanism under the coupled forces of a disc cutter and water jet was analyzed at...