Lateral Deflection of Cantilever Secant Pile in Soft Clay

Abstract

The performance of deep excavations is governed by the ground conditions such as soil stiffness and in situ stress conditions. Cantilever secant pile wall (CPW) is one of the retaining systems which are used to support deep excavation. Its lateral deflection has great importance as it shows the behavior of CPW in the soil. Two dimensional analysis (2D) and three dimensional analysis (3D) may be used to get the lateral deflection in numerical solution. This study is focused on 2D and 3D analysis for CPW in soft clay. The finite element software Abaqus/CAE-v6.9 has been used in the analysis. The 2D study analysis takes into account the different CPW depths and its diameter effect. The construction stages effect on the lateral deflection have been studied also. The 3D study analysis takes into account the different excavation geometry “the length and width of the excavation” effect, also different depths for CPW in 3D analysis have been studied also. The results showed that longer CPW has larger lateral deflection while CPW diameters have no effect on lateral deflection. Later deflection in one construction stage may be double that of previous stage. Also it was found that later deflection in three dimensional (3D) analysis is higher than the 2D analysis by three times. This confirms that 3D analysis of CPW in soft clay leads to more accurate results than 2D analysis.