Abstract: The presence of mud cake on the cutterhead considerably affects shield tunneling operations. Consequently, a comprehensive case study is performed to investigate the development of mud cake on the cutter beam area of a slurry shield cutterhead operating under atmospheric pressure. A calculation methodology using Kriging interpolation is established. First, a temperature sensor is positioned on the cutterhead to collect temperature readings. Then, this data is extrapolated through linear interpolation and analyzed using the Kriging interpolation technique. Finally, the criteria for assessing the degree of mud cake development on the cutterhead during normal excavation, peripheral mud cake, and inner mud cake stages are delineated spatiotemporally. A method involving the identification of positive and negative differences between adjacent temperature readings is introduced to obtain an evaluation index for the initial ring′s mud cake development, represented by the cumulative sum of temperature variations across the cutterhead. Using the established temperature distribution data, the cumulative temperature change rates from the initial ring to the current mud cakedeveloped ring are employed as an index of mud cake progression. Through a detailed case study, the results of inverse distance weighting, Kriging interpolation, and Kriging interpolation with expanded samples are evaluated and compared, revealing that Kriging interpolation with expanded samples attains the highest accuracy of 70.87%.

Key words: atmospheric pressure cutterhead, mud cake on cutterhead, largediameter slurry shield, cutterhead temperature, Kriging interpolation, finite element analysis