A Numerical Study of a Soil-Nail-Supported Excavation Pit Subjected to a Vertically Loaded Strip Footing at the Crest

Abstract

Soil nailing is a prevalent and cost-effective technique employed to reinforce and enhance the stability of precarious natural or cut slopes; however, its application as a primary support system to prevent collapses or cave-ins during foundation excavation could be more frequent. To better understand the behavior of such a support system, this study simulated a full-scale nail-supported excavation for the foundation pit of a 20-story building to examine the effect of placing a strip footing with various combinations of configurations on the crest of the excavation pit. The results are discussed in terms of the nail axial force, wall horizontal deflection, basal heave, and safety factor against sliding. The results show that the footing width and setback distance are the two most significant factors dominating the wall horizontal deflection. This study also reveals that the maximum axial force is closely related to the apparent active earth pressure, which accounts for the presence of a tension crack, at nail depth. Such a finding allows engineers to assess and mitigate the risks of structural failure more effectively and optimize the design of nail-retaining structures.

Slope Stability and Reliability Analysis of Earth Embankment Constructed for the Doubling of Railway Track

“…From Figure 2B, it can be seen that the nailing is expected to be installed (approximately) normal to the slope facing. Commercially available finite element tool PLAXIS 2D has been employed extensively for assessing the stability of soil nailed slopes (Babu and Singh, 2009;Moniuddin et al, 2016;Sharma and Ramkrishnan, 2020;Benayoun et al, 2021;Gui and Rajak, 2024). Elahi et al (2022) employed PLAXIS2D for the parametric study of soil nailed slope through numerical analysis and geometric parameters, such as, slope angle, back-slope angle, soil nail length, spacing and inclination were varied.…”