Effect of Statistical Data in the Probabilistic Analysis for Port-Said East Port Diaphragm Quay Wall

Abstract

Quay walls and deep excavations are typical applications of geotechnical retaining structures. These structures must be acceptable safe, and cost-effective. The design of retaining structures is usually carried out by using characteristic values for soil properties as a conservative estimation for Serviceability Limit State (SLS) and combined with safety factors for Ultimate Limit State (ULS). The soil parameters used in the design are uncertain values due to many reasons. Recently, probabilistic approaches started to take place in the engineering community. These approaches guaranty a reasonable level of reliability and reduces the risk and the investment cost. In the present paper, a developed technique for coupling between PLAXIS 2D V20 and Probabilistic Tool-Kit (PTK) will be employed to perform a reliability analysis for port-said east port diaphragm quay wall. This study aims to identify the probability of failure and the importance factors for each structural component using the First Order Reliability Method (FORM) and study the effect of varying the statistical data for the most significant soil parameters. The results show that the developed technique can perform the reliability analysis effectively. Also, it showed that the statistical data for soil parameters have a considerable effect on the probabilistic analysis results.

Keywords

• reliability analysis
• coupling technique
• uncertainty