Class A prediction of a retaining structure made by a pile curtain wall executed on a tropical soil

Abstract

Some retaining structures can be designed on a temporary basis, in accordance to the geotechnical design and a predefined construction plan. Off course this may not be valid elsewhere, but in Brasília, where residual and laterized soils do prevail, best mechanical resistances are obtained in the porous clay setrata along the dry season. That means, it is controlled by soil´s suction, i.e. soil behavior presents a dependency on the unsaturated response of the medium. In numerical terms, to predict the soil-structure behavior it is necessary to include the atmosphere-soil interaction in the computational tool, using a hypoplastic model. The paper thus details on this aspect and on the numerical simulations of an existing retaining structure founded in the tropical soil of Brasília. The structure was monitored in terms of displacement, along local dry and wet seasons, and was simulated by a constitutive law calibrated by means of unsaturated laboratory tests.

Keywords

• unsaturated response
• numerical prediction
• hypoplasticity
• retaining structures
• pile curtain