According to the characters of high geostress soft rock

in-situ stress test

crown settlement and convergence

contact stress

and structural stress monitoring are performed for Xiakou tunnel of Yichang-Badong highway in Hubei province. The in-situ stress test results show that the geostress is very high even if the embedded depth is not too large. The monitoring results also show that the deformation and structure stress of the high geostress soft rock tunnel

is closed related with the excavation way

distance to the working face

and supporting time

appearing in obvious time-space effect. After the working face’s past

the rock surrounding’s extrusion deforming and structure stress increases continuously due to the rheology of soft rock mass under high geostress

eventually leading to the instability of surrounding rock mass and failure of the supporting system. Based on the research results above

the supporting design countermeasures of the tunnel with high geostress and large deformation are put forward. The research results provide the basis for Xiakou tunnel’s construction and supporting design; and are valuable value to the high geostress soft rock highway tunnels in western China.