Control of groundwater by exclusion

Abstract

Abstract The movement of water into an excavation can be impeded by placing a barrier around the excavation. Such excavation barriers include sheet piling, contiguous bored pile walls, slurry trenches, diaphragm walls, grout curtains and panels, and ice walls. Ideally an exclusion barrier should extend into an impermeable stratum. If this does not happen, then upward seepage of water into the excavation may occur which, in turn, may give rise to instability at excavation level. To prevent such instability, the exclusion barrier should be extended horizontally. Of the exclusion techniques mentioned, only grouting and freezing can be used to form a horizontal exclusion barrier.