Ground movements due to excavation in clay: physical and analytical models

摘要

In view of the recent catastrophes associated with deep excavations, there is an urgent need to provide vital guidelines on the design of the construction process. To develop a simple tool for predicting ground deformation around a deep excavation construction for preliminary design and decision-making purposes, small scale centrifuge models were made to observe the complicated mechanisms involved.A newly developed actuation system, with which the construction sequences ofpropping could be implemented, was developed, the new procedures were proven to give more realistic initial ground conditions before excavation with minimal development of pre-excavation bending moment and wall displacement. Incremental wall deformation profiles generally followed the O’Rourke cosine bulge equation and a new deformation mechanism was proposed with respect to wall toe fixity and excavation geometry.Validation of the conservation energy principle was carried out for the undrainedexcavation process. The total loss of potential energy was shown to be balanced by the total work done in shearing and the total elastic energy stored in structures with an error term of 30%.An improved mobilizable strength method (MSD) method using observed mechanistic deformation patterns was introduced to calculate the displacement profile ofa multi-propped undrained excavation in soft clay. The incremental loss in potentialenergy associated with the formation of settlement toughs was balanced by the sum ofincremental storage of elastic energy and the energy dissipation in shearing. A reasonable agreement was found between the prediction by the MSD method and the finite element results computed by an advanced MIT-E3 model for wall displacements, groundsettlement, base heave and bending moment on fixed base walls. For cases of excavationssupported by floating walls, the effect of embedded wall length, depth of the stiff layer, bending stiffness of wall and excavation geometry and over-consolidation ratio of soils were found to have a influence on the maximum wall deflection. In general, the predictions fell within 30% of the finite element computed results.A new chart ψ versus normalized system stiffness was used to demonstrate that MSDcould correctly capture the trend of wall displacements increasing with the ratio ofexcavation depth to depth of stiff layer, which could be controlled by increasing wallstiffness for very stiff wall system only. The incorporation of a simple parabolic curvequantifying small strain stiffness of soil was proven to be essential to good groundmovement predictions. A new dimensionless group has been defined using the MSDconcepts to analyze 110 cases of excavation. The new database can now be used toinvestigate the relationship between structural response ratio S and soil-structure stiffness ratio R where this is shown on log-log axes to capture the enormous range of wall stiffness between sheet-piles and thick diaphragm walls. Wall stiffness was found to have a negligible influence on the magnitude of the wall bulging displacements for deep excavation supported by fixed-based wall with stiffness ranging from sheet pile walls to ordinary reinforced concrete diaphragm walls, whereas excavations supported by floating walls were found to be influenced by wall stiffness due to the difference in deformation mechanisms.