In face of the complicated and changing geological conditions, safety issue is always a primary concern during the construction phase of tunnel in the mountainous regions of China. This Express Letter reports data collection concerning the geo-hazardous events recorded in tunnel system in the period from 2002 to 2018. These accidents include collapse, water inrush, gas explosion, portal landslide, suffocation and avalanche. A total of 97 geohazard events resulted in 393 deaths, 467 injuries and 51 missing. Statistical results indicate that collapse is the primary geohazard in mountain tunnel construction. The data confirmed a high correlation between the number of casualties and geohazard accidents quantity. It is also observed that water inrush is more likely to happen in karst region, while the collapse is mainly recorded in loess and karst areas. During the period under the review, the data illustrates an overall decrease of casualties and geohazard events, but it still faces a grim situation regarding the geohazard prevention in mountain tunnels construction of China. Hence, countermeasures and future research attempts focusing on geohazards prevention and mitigation are recommended.

The issue of large deformation mechanism in soft rock tunnels has puzzled tunnel scholars for decades. Previous studies have not evolved a clear and common understanding. Therefore, detailed on-site measurement, full investigation and statistical analysis have been conducted on the instability and failure of Muzhailing Tunnel since its construction, whose length is beyond 15 km. The study aims at systematically analyzing the failure mechanisms and modes of Muzhailing Tunnel in monoclinic and soft-hard interbedded rock strata. Study results show that the angle between strata strike and tunnel axis greatly determines the magnitude of deformation, the dip direction significantly controls the bias direction and maximum deformation direction, and the dip angle deeply affects the deformation form. The failure modes of surrounding rock mainly include four types: spalling and overturning failure, bending failure, shear slip failure and buckling failure. Large deformation characteristics are summarized from six aspects: failure form, groundwater, sensitivity to influencing factors, deformation degree, deformation speed and deformation duration. The instability modes of primary lining include in-plane (transverse) instability and out-plane (longitudinal) instability. Finally, the causes of large deformation are analyzed from geological, structural, engineering and human factors.

Reasonable evaluation and prediction of squeezing condition to avoid large deformation disaster in tunnels have been an important research issue. In order to accurately and rapidly predict the large deformation under complex geological conditions, this paper proposes a classification and prediction method for quick identification of large deformation in tunnel construction stage in a case study of Muzhailing Tunnel. Previous prediction methods of large deformation are usually based on the stages of geological survey and engineering design, and there are great difficulties in obtaining some prediction indexes in soft and fractured strata, such as uniaxial compressive strength. In this paper, the nonlinear deformation behaviors of surrounding rock were analyzed. The geo-stress condition, strata occurrence, rock strength, rock intactness and groundwater condition were chosen as evaluation indexes (including eight sub-indexes). The classification of large deformation was carried out based on the deformation statistics in Muzhailing Tunnel. And the fuzzy prediction was conducted and compared with other methods in engineering. The comparison results show that the new method has higher accuracy and applicability in predicting the large deformation of weak rock mass. This study provides a new approach for rapid identification and prediction of large deformation in tunnel construction stage.