City metro construction may affect surrounding structures significantly.The structure failure mechanism due to tunnel shielding is one of the key points for promoting construction safety and preventing and controlling risks.Therefore

it is necessary to investigate the soil settlements and the failure mechanism of surrounding structures due to tunneling

based on a typical engineering project.The main conclusions are as follows:（1）The soil settlement due to metro shielding is significant;the maximum settlement is 10.71 cm during the shielding process

which is worthy of attention during construction;（2）The soil settlement due to shielding is one of the main reasons that result in structure failures.The maximum stress in the lining is 14.29 MPa

which is lower than the compression strength of C50 concrete（23.1 MPa）

indicative of the safety of the lining during construction;（3）The maximum stress of box culvert under the most unfavorable condition is 5.32 MPa

occurring at the connection section of two box culverts

which may induce the crack of the structure;（4）The maximum stress point moves toward the right tunnel direction and the maximum stress value is approximately stable while the right tunnel is shielding;（5）The difference between the numerical simulation results and the monitoring data is acceptable;hence

this study is helpful for similar engineering projects.