Predicting the face support pressure and understanding the failure mode for shield tunnel with different longitudinal inclination, δ, in dense sand strata are crucial. Six laboratory model tests are conducted to explore the failure mechanism of tunnel face with δ = 15°, 0°, and −15°. It shows that the face support pressure declines sharply to the elastic limit value, and further decrease slowly to the minimum value for all δ conditions. When δ = 15° or 0°, the face support pressure rebounds slightly to a residual value. However, rebound is not prominent for δ = −15°. The influence of “soil arch” strength reduces when δ varies from −15°, 0°, to 15°. The final shape of the failure zone shows a “chimney” pattern, in which the area of the failure zone increases with δ. Similar failure patterns are obtained from the numerical simulations. Based on the measured contours of failure zones, novel theoretical models are proposed to calculate the limit face support pressure for three inclination conditions. The face support pressure, p_u, is predicted to be the highest for δ > 0°, following by the cases of δ = 0° and δ < 0°, and the change in p_u is higher between δ > 0° and δ = 0°.

在致密的砂岩层中，预测面支撑压力并了解具有不同纵向倾斜度δ的盾构隧道的破坏模式至关重要。进行了六个实验室模型测试，以探索δ  = 15°，0°和-15°的隧道工作面的破坏机理。结果表明，在所有δ条件下，面部支撑压力均急剧下降至弹性极限值，并进一步缓慢下降至最小值。当δ  = 15°或0°时，面部支撑压力会略微反弹至残差值。但是，对于δ  = -15° ，回弹并不明显。δ减小“土拱”强度的影响从-15°，0°到15°不等。破坏区的最终形状呈“烟囱”形，其中破坏区的面积随δ的增加而增加。从数值模拟中可以获得类似的故障模式。基于测得的失效区域轮廓，提出了新颖的理论模型来计算三种倾角条件下的极限工作面支撑压力。在δ  > 0°的情况下，接着在δ  = 0°和δ  <0°的情况下，预测面部支撑压力p _u最高，并且在δ  > 0°和δ之间，p _u的变化较大。 = 0°。