Enhancement of steel sheet-piling quay walls using grouted anchors

Abstract

Steel sheet-pilings are one of the most common types of quay walls used in the construction of ports and harbors facilities, especially for berths of small crafts which have small dimensions and capacity. Due to the growing market of marine traffic around the world, an increasing number of these berths are required to be upgraded to meet the requirements of permanently growing dimensions and capacity of vessels. Several methods can be used to increase the load-carrying capacity of steel sheet-piling walls. The use of additional anchored tie rods grouted into the backfill soil and arranged along the exposed wall height is one of the most appropriate solutions adopted for rehabilitation and upgrading of the existing quay wall. An extensive parametric study through the finite element program, PLAXIS, version 8.2 was carried out to investigate the enhancement of using grouted anchors technique on the load response of sheet-piling quay wall. The influence of sheet-pile wall geometry, grout-ties area, inclination and location, length of grout, dredging depth and backfill soil angle of internal friction to enhance this type of walls are analyzed and the results are presented. Key words: Anchor, grouting-ties, harbor, marine, quay wall, sheet pile, retaining wall.