The subsidiary stress problem of rock surrounding a circular tunnel is researched. Considering the stress-deformation characteristic of the total field
and applying the technique of series expansion
the appropriate stress functions are constructed. Accordingly
the complex potentials of the rock mass are obtained. The numerical results indicate that the orientations of the occurrence of severe stress concentration are unnecessarily near the hole
and the orientations of the occurrence of weak stress concentration are unnecessarily apart from the hole. When the embedded depth of the tunnel is 5 times than the radius of the tunnel
it can be treated as a circular hole in infinite matrix.