GEOTECHNICAL BARRIER OPTIONS WITH CHANGED GEOMETRIC PARAMETERS

Abstract

The study has been aimed at development of a new method of constructing a geotechnical barrier
(enclosing structures) when excavating pits, being more rigid compared with a sheet pile and a wall made of
bore-secant piles and having less labor content and less cost than a diaphragm wall. The method is mainly
aimed at ensuring the stability of the walls of the pit and protecting the adjacent territory from surface
settlement during its excavation. It is proposed to use two rows of piling walls connected by means of
specialized expanding anchors. The resulted geotechnical barrier is a 3D shoring characterized by significant
stiffness due to soil between the walls. The main advantages of the proposed method are its low complexity
and fast speed of building compared with the diaphragm wall, the ability to retrieve the barrier after completion
of work, as well as greater rigidity of the shoring structure compared with the sheet piling. Numerical
simulation of the proposed method has been carried out in order to obtain geomechanical assessment of its
efficiency. The calculations have been performed in the Plaxis software package. Initial data required for
simulation have been described in details. Various options for the implementation of the geotechnical barrier
with the change in the distance between the walls and different angles of inclination of the external wall have
been considered. Their comparison allowed choosing the most rational option for specific conditions. The
results of numerical modeling show the effectiveness of the proposed method for constructing a geotechnical
barrier.