Abstract: A rectangular pipe jacking machine is usually equipped with multiple cutterheads to cut and jack the soil mass on the excavation face by zoning. The torque setting parameters of cutterheads in different positions directly affect the excavation efficiency and safety of rectangular pipe jacking machines. Taking the pipe jacking construction of the Jingsan Road underground utility tunnel in Baotou as the engineering background, this paper uses various methods such as theoretical analysis and field measurement to study the changing pattern of the measured torques of cutterheads in different positions and the relevant torque settings during the jacking process. The conclusions are drawn as follows: the friction between the cutterhead and the soil mass mainly affects the torque of the cutterhead;the measured torque values of the cutterheads are close to the calculated values, and the former fluctuates dynamically with the jacking distance; the torques of three groups of cutterheads are of different values, of which the torque of the No.1 central large cutterhead in the first group is the largest, while that in the third group is the second and that in the second group is the smallest; the rated torque value of the No.1 central large cutterhead in the first group is about 1.36 times the measured torque value, while that of the small cutterheads in the second group is about 3.11 times the measured value, and that of the small cutterheads in the third group is about 2.8 times the measured value.The safety reserve setting of the rated torque value of the small cutterheads is quite high, and optimization could be achieved by appropriately reducing the rated torque value of the small cutterheads.