Internal Force on and Deformation of Steel Assembled Supporting Structure of Foundation Pit under Thermal Stress

Abstract

The steel assembled support structure of a foundation pit can be assembled easily with high strength and recycling value. Steel’s performance is significantly affected by the surrounding temperature due to its temperature sensitivity. Here, a full-scale experiment was conducted to study the influence of temperature on the internal force and deformation of supporting structures, and a three-dimensional finite element model was established for comparative analysis. The test results showed that under the temperature effect, the deformation of the central retaining pile was composed of rigid rotation and flexural deformation, while the adjacent pile of central retaining pile only experienced flexural deformation. The stress on the retaining pile crown changed little, while more stress accumulated at the bottom. Compared with the crown beam and waist beam 2, the stress on waist beam 1 was significantly affected by the temperature and increased by about 0.70 MPa/°C. Meanwhile, the stress of the rigid panel was greatly affected by the temperature, increasing 78% and 82% when the temperature increased by 15 °C on rigid panel 1 and rigid panel 2, respectively. The comparative simulation results indicated that the bending moment and shear strength of pile 1 were markedly affected by the temperature, but pile 2 and pile 3 were basically stable. Lastly, as the temperature varied, waist beam 2 had the largest change in the deflection, followed by waist beam 1; the crown beam experienced the smallest change in the deflection.