Instrumentation and Monitoring of a Four-Story Earth-Retaining ConcreteBuilding

摘要

A four-story reinforced concrete building retaining earth on one side andexhibiting large lateral displacement and structural distress was instrumented andmonitored for over four years. The rectangular building measuring 52.42 m by 71.32m is open to the elements and thus subjected to large temperature variation. Theapplication of classical lateral earth pressure theories and analysis methods for backanalysis were unsuccessful in predicting the observed behavior of the building.The instrumentation program involved the installation of eight vibrating-wiredisplacement transducers measuring the building movements in the longitudinal andtransverse directions, and 12 electrolytic tiltmeters mounted on the building wallabutting the retained soil backfill to measure the wall rotation. The instruments wereequipped with temperature sensors and were connected to an automatic dataacquisition system accessible via a remote connection.The monitoring results revealed the presence of a complex soil-structureinteraction involving the effects of temperature on the volumetric strains of thebuilding and their effects on the building movements and the development of lateralpressures in the retained earth mass. The results of the monitoring program arepresented in this paper.