Ground and Groundwater Responses Due to Shaft Excavation in Organic Soils
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 148, Issue 8
Abstract
Excavation of a 16-m deep shaft was suspended due to groundwater drawdown of about 4.5 m that led to nearby ground subsidence and settlement of infrastructure. As a remedial measure, a deep-ground recharge system comprising multipoint recharging wells was conceived and then designed to mitigate the detrimental effects caused by the groundwater drawdown on nearby infrastructure. In the three-dimensional (3D) finite-element model, fully coupled flow-deformation analyses have been successfully developed and used. The results of the numerical analyses show that the predicted and measured ground and groundwater responses achieved reasonably good agreement due to (1) successful understanding of the anisotropy of underlying site condition, (2) sound 3D modeling technique, and (3) sound engineering remedial design. The simulation of this case study evidenced the detrimental effect of anisotropy in permeability of organic soil during groundwater drawdown, in which the soil permeability in the horizontal direction is, on average, five times higher than the permeability in the vertical direction.
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Data Availability Statement
Data, models, or code generated or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial sponsorship from Hock Seng Lee Berhad and Jurutera Jasa (Sarawak) Sdn Bhd in making this paper a reality. The strong support of Bentley Institute and Bentley Systems in extending the use of PLAXIS 3D Ultimate educational version is greatly appreciated, without which this manuscript would not have been possible. The contributions of S.T.Y. Wong are also duly acknowledged.
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Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 148 • Issue 8 • August 2022
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Mar 10, 2020
Accepted: Mar 4, 2022
Published online: May 17, 2022
Published in print: Aug 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Oct 17, 2022
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