Safety Assessment of Pile-Founded T-Walls in the Face of Flooding Hazards
Publication: Geo-Congress 2022
ABSTRACT
Pile-founded T-walls are widely used for levees in New Orleans and other regions of the United States as a key infrastructure for flooding protection. Traditionally, the safety evaluation of pile-founded T-walls follows a simplified deterministic procedure. It is critical to evaluate the performance of the pile-founded T-wall in a probabilistic manner under the potential flooding hazards. This paper presents a study for the safety assessment of the pile-founded T-wall system in the face of flooding hazards using both deterministic and probabilistic procedures. First, the deterministic analysis for the performance assessment is performed using the three-dimensional finite-difference modeling. Then, uncertainties in geotechnical strength parameters are considered using Monte Carlo simulations and finite-difference modeling to evaluate the variability of the performance of the pile-founded T-wall under different flooding hazard levels in a probabilistic manner. The resulting factor of safety curves of pile-founded T-walls in both deterministic and probabilistic manners under various flooding hazard levels are analyzed. It is observed that the mean factors of safety obtained using Monte Carlo simulations are very consistent with the results from deterministic analyses. However, with the probabilistic analyses, the variability of the factor of safety due to input geotechnical uncertainties can be explicitly evaluated. The safety assessment framework is demonstrated through a case study of the pile-founded T-wall design.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Ang, A. H. S., and Tang, W. H. (2007). Probability Concepts in Engineering: Emphasis on Applications to Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2nd edition, Wiley, New York.
Brandon, T. L., Wright, S. G., and Duncan, J. M. (2008). “Analysis of the stability of I-Walls with gaps between the I-Wall and the levee fill.” Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 134(5), 692–700.
Duncan, J. M. (2000). “Factors of safety and reliability in geotechnical engineering.” Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 126(4), 307–316.
Duncan, J. M., Brandon, T. L., Wright, S. G., and Vroman, N. (2008). Stability of I-walls in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 134(5), 681–691.
FEMA. (2012). Engineering Principles and Practices for Retrofitting Floodprone Residential Buildings. FEMA 259, 3rd Edition, Washington, DC.
Gong, W., Wang, L., Khoshnevisan, S., Juang, C. H., Huang, H., and Zhang, J. (2014). “Robust geotechnical design of earth slopes using fuzzy sets.” Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 141(1), 04014084.
Itasca. (2019). - Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua in 3 Dimensions User Manual, Itasca, MN.
Johnson, J. B., Vahedifard, F., Kokkali, P., Tessari, A. F., Abdoun, T., and Varuso, R. J. (2017). “Numerical simulation of T-walls supported by batter piles within a levee embankment.” DFI Journal-The Journal of the Deep Foundations Institute, 11(1), 2–12.
Kokkali, P., Tessari, A., Abdoun, T., Varuso, R., Johnson, J., Filz, G., and Reeb, A. (2018). Settlement-induced bending moments on pile-founded floodwalls. International Journal of Physical Modelling in Geotechnics, 18(1), 2–20.
Rajabalinejad, M., van Gelder, P. H. A. J. M., Demirbilek, Z., Mahdi, T. F., and Vrijling, J. K. (2010). “Application of the dynamic bounds method in the safety assessment of flood defences, a case study: 17th street flood wall, New Orleans.” Georisk, 4(4), 157–173.
Reeb, A. B. (2016). Response of Pile-Supported T-Walls to Fill Loading and Flood Loading Based on Physical Model Studies and Numerical Analyses, Doctoral dissertation, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
Wang, L., Powers, M., Studiner, M., Fallatah, M., and Gong, W. (2018). “Geotechnical stability analysis of earthen levees in the face of uncertainty.” Proceedings of the International Foundation Congress and Equipment Expo (IFCEE) 2018, ASCE Geotechnical Special Publication 297, pp. 247–256.
Won, J., Adhikari, S., Song, C. R., Cheng, A. H. D., and Al-Ostaz, A. (2011). Evaluation of a T-wall section in New Orleans considering 3D soil-structure interaction. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 137(8), 731–742.
Phoon, K. K., and Kulhawy, F. H. (1999). “Characterization of geotechnical variability.” Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 36(4), 612–624.
USACE. (2008). Hurricane and storm damage reduction system design guidelines (HSDRS DG), New Orleans District Engineering Div., New Orleans, LA.
Xu, B., and Low, B. K. (2006). “Probabilistic stability analyses of embankments based on finite-element method.” Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 132(11), 1444–1454.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Geo-Congress 2022
Pages: 272 - 280
History
Published online: Mar 17, 2022
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.