Centrifuge modeling of land subsidence caused by the high-rise building group in the soft soil area

Abstract

With the increase of the high-rise buildings, land subsidence induced by human activities becomes a major problem. Land subsidence occurs slowly, but the accumulation results in the cracks in the road, the damage to the pipelines and in the tilting or the cracking of the buildings. With the withdrawal of groundwater controlled reasonably, the engineering-environmental effect of the dense high-rise building group comes to be the main cause of land subsidence. Based on the high-rise building group in the soft soil area in Shanghai, the mechanism of land subsidence is studied in this paper by the centrifuge model tests. The central area of the building group has larger subsidence and the subsidence superimposition effect is obvious. It can exceed the allowance and cause land subsidence hazard. The land subsidence affected by the different building distances is also studied. For smaller building distances, the subsidence superimposition effect is more obvious. The larger excess pore water pressure in the pile-base supporting layer of the central area shows that the stress superimposition effect is larger. The earth pressure under the buildings fluctuates by the disturbance of the pile tips.