Linear failure criterion is widely used in calculation of earth pressure acting on shallow tunnels. However, experimental evidence shows that nonlinear failure criterion is able to represent fairly well the failure of almost all types of rocks. A nonlinear Hoek-Brown failure criterion is employed to estimate the supporting pressures of shallow tunnels in limit analysis framework. Two failure mechanisms are proposed for calculating the work rate of external force and the internal energy dissipation. A tangential line to the nonlinear failure criterion is used to formulate the supporting pressure problem as a nonlinear programming problem. The objective function formulated in this way is minimized with respect to the failure mechanism and the location of tangency point. In order to assess the validity, the supporting pressures for the proposed failure mechanisms are calculated and compared with each other, and the present results are compared with previously published solutions when the nonlinear criterion is reduced to linear criterion. The agreement supports the validity of the proposed failure mechanisms. An experiment is conducted to investigate the influences of the nonlinear criterion on collapse shape and supporting pressures of shallow tunnels. Linear failure criterion is widely used in calculation of earth pressure acting on shallow tunnels. However, experimental evidence shows that nonlinear failure criterion is able to represent fairly well the failure of almost all types of rocks. A nonlinear Hoek-Brown failure criterion is employed to estimate the supporting pressures of shallow tunnels in limit analysis framework. Two failure mechanisms are proposed for calculating the work rate of external force and the internal energy dissipation. A tangential line to the nonlinear failure criterion is used to formulate the supporting pressure problem as a nonlinear programming problem. The objective function formulated in this way is minimized with respect to the failure mechanism and the location of tangency point. In order to assess the validity, the supporting efforts for the proposed failure mechanisms are calculated and compared with each other, and the present results are compared with previously published solutions when the The agreement supports the validity of the proposed failure mechanisms. The agreement supports the validity of the proposed failure mechanisms. An experiment is conducted to investigate the influences of the nonlinear criterion on collapse shape and the supporting pressures of shallow tunnels.