Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Comparison of Subgrade Reaction and FEM For D Wall Design
Comparison of Subgrade Reaction and FEM For D Wall Design
ABSTRACT
The objective of this paper is to compare the diaphragm wall deflections, bending moment
and strut forces estimated by subgrade reaction method (SRM) and finite element method
(FEM). A case of bottom-up and top-down construction sequences for a metro station is
modelled. The maximum excavation depth is about 19 m below ground in predominantly
sandy soils. The excavation is retained by 1m thick, 28.6 m deep reinforced concrete
diaphragm wall founded in highly weathered charnockite. Appropriate surcharge due to
construction equipments, adjacent buildings and traffic loads are considered in the analysis.
The maximum wall deflection for top-down construction, predicted by both SRM & FEM is
about 52 mm and for bottom-up construction, maximum wall deflection predicted by SRM is
about 22% higher than that of FEM. This could be because of the fact that FEM can model
arching effects behind the deflected wall. The soil arching behind wall lowers the net active
earth pressure and thereby the wall deflection. The magnitude of maximum bending moment
predicted by FEM was marginally lower than that obtained from subgrade reaction method.
The choice of method of analysis and the economy of design it may offer depends upon
complexity of project and geology of the area. Therefore, a comparison of various methods
of analyses in initial stage of project is important before detailed designs are carried out.
1 INTRODUCTION
2 SITE GEOLOGY
The area is an easterly sloping coastal plain. The eastern and southern parts of the area
have shallow bedrocks, while the central and northern zone has deep bed rock. The greater
part of the district is covered by Pleistocene to Holocene alluvium of rivers in the north and in
the south. The thickness of alluvium varies from a few meters in southern parts to more than
50m in central and northern parts. The average depth to bedrock in the district varies from
20m to 25m. The alluvium consists of silty sand, sandy clay, silt and occasional gravels and
is underlain by crystalline rocks mostly of charnokite series. The ground water table is
shallow and rises near to ground level during rains. The generalized geological profile is
shown in Figure 1. Table 1 shows geological profile and engineering properties of soils and
rock considered for the purpose of this study.
3 CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE
In the present study BU and TD construction sequence were analyzed with SRM and FEM.
A typical cross-section of the station excavation using BU and TD construction sequence is
shown in Figure 1. The maximum excavation depth was 19.125 m below ground, and the
excavation was retained by 1m thick, 28.6 m deep reinforced concrete diaphragm wall
founded in highly weathered charnockite. The geometrical and material properties of
diaphragm wall, slabs and struts are given in Table 2. A 10 m wide traffic surcharge of
20 kPa was applied at a distance of 1m away from the wall. The effect of building
foundations near the excavation was considered by applying a 10 m wide, 100 kPa
surcharge at ground level at a distance of 11 m from the edge of diaphragm wall. The
construction stages modeled for BU and TD method are given in Tables 3 and 4 respectively.
The groundwater level outside excavation was considered at ground level and groundwater
profile was considered to be hydrostatic throughout the period of excavation.
FEM discretizes the geometry of problem into many small regions, or finite elements, which
are connected at a discrete number of nodes located on their boundaries. FEM reduces the
problem of a continuous body with an infinite number of unknowns, to that of a discretized
body with a finite number of unknowns, corresponding to the displacement components of
the nodes. The major problem dealing with finite element analysis are: geometric modeling
and discretization, modeling of installation, excavation and pore pressure equalization,
choice of constitutive model and associated soil parameters, and finally computational
difficulties (Woods and Clayton, 1992). Comparative analyses have shown that, although
simple models generally provide realistic values of wall movements, only the most complex
may accurately predict soil displacements (Viggiani and Tamagnini, 1997). In this paper, the
wall was assumed to be linearly-elastic and the soil continuum as a linearly-elastic perfectly-
plastic material. Commercially available software was used for finite element analysis.
The key features of the FEM analyses are:
a) The diaphragm wall is assumed to be “wished in place” and sequential excavation
were simulated by removing the soil clusters from the front of the wall and activating
the strut and slab elements.
b) Diaphragm wall, slabs, columns and barrettes were modeled using plate element with
elastic behavior
c) Soil and rock were modeled as Mohr-coulomb materials with Elasto-Plastic behavior
d) 15 noded triangular elements were used for soil and rock
e) The mesh size was set to „fine‟ with about 6863 nodes and 797 elements
f) Struts were modeled as node-to-node anchors with elastic behavior and slabs were
modeled using plate elements.
g) The boundary of problem was set at a distance of 4 times the excavation depth as
suggested by Kung et al (2009) to avoid any boundary effects.
h) The water table at each stage was assumed to follow the excavation profile with
hydrostatic pore pressure at all stages of excavation.
The wall deflection profiles for SRM and FEM are compared in Figure 2. For BU
construction, the maximum wall deflection predicted by SRM is about 22% higher than that of
FEM as shown in Figure 2 (a). This could be because of the fact that FEM can model
arching effects behind the deflected wall. The soil arching behind wall lowers the net active
earth pressure and thereby the wall deflection. However, in case of TD construction the
maximum wall deflection predicted by both methods is about 52 mm. The maximum wall
deflection in the TD construction is observed at an elevation of about -15 mRL which is at the
base slab level. This is due to large inward movement of wall from construction stage 10 to
stage 11 (in reference to Table 4). As shown in Figure 2 (b), the wall deflection estimated by
FEM at the roof slab level (i.e. at -0.1 mRL) is about 70 % lower, compared to that estimated
by SRM. In case of TD construction the arching plays important role upto an excavation
depth of about 9m (i.e. stage 10 in reference to Table 4), when deflections are relatively
small. As the excavation progresses below the concourse slab (i.e. below -6.2 mRL), the
wall deflection increases rapidly and the deflection predicted by FEM converges with SRM at
the base slab level.
The bending moment envelopes obtained from SRM and FEM are compared in Figure 3.
From Figure 3 (a), it is observed that the bending moment on „excavated side‟ predicted by
SRM and FEM follow identical trend and the magnitude of bending moment is comparable.
The SRM predicts slightly higher bending moments possibly because; SRM does not
account the arching effects behind the wall. However, the bending moments towards
retained face predicted by FEM are notably high at the roof and concourse slab levels. In
case of TD construction sequence the bending moment predicted by FEM and SRM are
identical for all practical purposes. The strut forces predicted by FEM were generally higher
than SRM as seen in Figure 4.
In case of SRM, horizontal soil yielding is often evaluated by means of the Caquot and
Kerisel (1966) earth pressure coefficients. These coefficients refer to free displacements of
rigid walls, and may be not suitable for multi propped walls when arching phenomena modify
the stress field behind the wall. Carrubba and Colonna (2000) suggested that the mean
active and passive earth pressure coefficients may be evaluated by FEM and subsequently
introduced in SRM. By this approach, the results obtained by SRM and FEM may show
better agreement.
(a) Bottom-Up (b) Top-Down
7 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper a deep excavation in saturated sand was analysed with subgrade reaction
method (SRM) and finite element method (FEM). The commonly used bottom-up (BU) and
top-down (TD) construction sequence were modelled using FEM and SRM. In general, the
wall deflection, bending moments and strut forces predicted by SRM were in agreement with
FEM.
(a) Bottom-Up (b) Top-Down
Figure 4 Strut forces
The appropriate values of soil stiffness and limiting earth pressures is an important factor
when analysing a problem with SRM. The major drawback of SRM is its inability to account
for soil arching and to perform stability calculations. The FEM models the reduction in active
earth pressure due to soil arching. Therefore the wall deflections predicted by FEM were
generally lower than SRM. The mean active and passive earth pressure coefficients may be
evaluated by FEM and subsequently introduced in SRM. By this approach, the results
obtained by SRM and FEM may show better agreement. A comparison of various methods
of analyses in initial stage of project can be useful before detailed designs are carried out.
REFERENCES
Caquot, A. and Kerisel, J. 1966. Traite de mecanique des sols. Paris: Gauthier-Villars.
Carrubba, P. and Colonna, P., 2000. A comparison of numerical methods for multi-tied
walls. Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 27 pp. 117-140
CIRIA – C580, 2003. Embedded retaining walls – guidance for economic design. Edited by
Gaba, A.R., Simpson, B., Powrie, W., and Beadman, D. R., Published by CIRIA,
London, UK.
Kung, G.T.C., Ou, C.Y., Juang C. H., 2009. Modelling small-strain behaviour of Taipei clays
for finite element analysis of braced excavations. Computers and Geotechnics, vol.
36, pp. 304–319
Pappin, J.W., Simpson, B., Felton, P.J., Raison, C., 1985. Numerical analysis of flexible
retaining walls. Proceedings of the NUMETA '85 Conference, Swansea, UK. pp. 789-
802.
Tamaro, G.J., and Gould, J.P., 1992. Analysis and design of cast in situ walls (diaphragm
walls). Proceedings Retaining Structure, Cambridge, pp. 343- 352.
Viggiani, G. and Tamagnini, C. 1997. Analisi dei movimenti in corrispondenza di scavi
sostenuti da paratie ancorate: alcune considerazioni sull'influenza del modello
costitutivo. In: Atti del IV Convegno Nazionale del C.N.R., Perugia, pp. 603 - 623.
Woods, R.I., Clayton. C.R.I., 1992. The application of the CRISP finite element program to
practical retaining wall problems. Proceedings Retaining Structures, Cambridge, pp.
102-111.