The development of installation technologies of open caissons has been lagging behind increasingly complex construction conditions. For such purpose, a new installation technology of large diameter deeply-buried (LDDB) open caissons has been developed and then used for construction of twin LDDB caissons into undrained ground with stiff soils in Zhenjiang, China. To assess the installation effects and filed performance, a monitoring program was presented to document the variations in total jacking forces provided by new shaft driven method, ground water level (GWL) around the caisson shaft, inclination angles of caisson shafts and radial displacements of surrounding soils as well as surface settlements of existing nearby facilities. It is observed that the monitoring data during the installation falls almost entirely within the design criteria, the reported new technology has limited impacts on the induced ground movements, depending on the variation in GWL, interaction between twin caissons and excavation-induced unloading effect. Moreover, the total jacking forces increase approximately in stepwise shape as the installation depth increases; the change law of surface settlements is highly similar to those of GWL, showing their close correlation; the larger inclination angles of caisson shafts are mainly encountered in the earlier installation phase, but well controllable. Further discussion on ground movements caused by various technologies confirms the feasibility of new installation technology. Both the observed and compared results give greater confidence on the use of such the technology in practice.

Pit-in-pit (PIP) excavations in an aquifer–aquitard system likely undergo catastrophic failures under the hydraulic uplift, the associated undrained stability problem, however, has not been well analyzed in the past. To this end, a hypothetical model of PIP braced excavation in typical soil layers of Shanghai, China is developed using the finite element limit analysis (FELA) tool. The FELA solutions of safety factors (FSs) against hydraulic uplift are verified with the results from the finite element analysis with strength reduction technique (SRFEA) and existing design approaches. Subsequently, FELA is employed to identify the triggering and failure mechanisms of PIP braced excavations subjected to hydraulic uplift. A series of parametric studies considering the various geometric configurations of the PIP excavation, undrained shear strengths of aquitard, and artesian pressures are carried out. The sensitivities of relevant design parameters are further assessed using a multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) model that is capable of accurately capturing the nonlinear relationships between a set of input variables and output variables in multi-dimensions. A MARS-based design equation used for predicting FS is finally presented using the artificial dataset from FELA for practical design uses.

There is currently a lack of an available design approach to estimate the earth pressure in narrow backfills behind retaining walls rotated about the top (RT). The considerations of some significant factors, primarily load transfer mechanisms (soil arching effect and horizontal shear stress in soils), failure mechanisms (shape and number of slip surfaces) and soil cohesion are often neglected for brevity in routine design. Such simplifications may lead to significant deviations from reality. This paper first uses the finite element limit analysis (FELA) technique to identify the underlying failure mechanisms and load transfer mechanisms. The results observed in FELA models indicate that active rotation of walls about the top develops one curved slip surface, which can be approximated by the log-spiral function. Under the soil arching effect, the upper intermediate passive zone with major principal stress rotation trajectory and the lower active zone with minor one can be defined. The arched differential element method (ADEM) is then introduced to formulate the earth pressure calculation. The results from newly published tests, existing analytical approaches, and FELA are compared to validate the accuracy of the proposed approach in both purely-frictional and cohesive-frictional soils. Parametric studies are further conducted to thoroughly understand the earth pressure problems, considering the effects of sensitive design variables (e.g. aspect ratio, soil strength parameters, and wall-soil interface friction angle). The analytical approach presented here would be a great extension to the design guidelines for the retaining structures with narrow backfills.

Active earth pressure on retaining structures supporting a narrow column of soil cannot be properly analysed using Coulomb's theory. Finite-element limit analysis (FELA) shows that the soil forms multiple failure surfaces if the soil column is sufficiently narrow. This paper proposes a framework for active earth pressure estimation for narrow soils by combining an arched differential element method and a sliding wedge method. The analytical framework considers both soil friction and cohesion, soil arching effects and shear stress between adjacent differential elements. The solution obtained is validated against experimental data and FELA results. Through parametric studies, the effects on the active earth pressure of the aspect ratio, soil friction, soil cohesion and wall-soil interface roughness are examined. To facilitate the use of the proposed framework in design, a modified active earth pressure coefficient and an application height of active thrust are provided.