In tunnel engineering, the integration of aseismic materials and structural designs has become a prevalent strategy to reduce earthquake-induced damage. However, previous studies on the seismic performance of tunnel structures predominantly employed deterministic methods, overlooking the spatial variability of the surrounding rock mass. This oversight often leads to an overestimation of structural performance, posing potential risks to the project. This study develops a probabilistic framework based on random field theory to evaluate the aseismic performance of tunnel linings incorporating a rubber–sand–concrete (RSC) constrained damping layer. The analysis systematically evaluates the aseismic performance of RSC across varying peak ground acceleration (PGA) levels and tunnel depth conditions. The findings are compared with results from traditional deterministic approaches. The probabilistic analysis indicates the following: (1) a reduction of approximately 70% in the dispersion of maximum principal stresses across various PGAs; (2) a decrease in RSC’s aseismic performance with greater burial depths, though it remains substantial overall, and (3) a reduction in the failure probability from 31.8% to 16.3% at PGA = 1.2 g. Furthermore, deterministic methods tend to produce overly optimistic estimates of tunnel aseismic performance, highlighting the need for probabilistic analysis.
Li et al. (Fri,) studied this question.