Nonlinear Numerical Study On Performance of Cofferdam With Double-walled Steel Sheet Piles

At present, there are many international engineering practices of double-walled cofferdam with steel sheet piles. Double-walled cofferdam with steel sheet piles is widely employed in port engineering due to its good integrity, construction convenience and multifold testing measures. For computational convenience, conventional methods are mainly based on earth-pressure theory. In the present work, nonlinear numerical computation is conducted by developing elasto-plastic FE model in plane strain state, employing Mohr-Coulomb yield criterion to describe the elaso-plasticity of subsoil and Coulomb contact pair theory with penalty algorithm to simulate the discontinuous contact behavior between foundation and soil, as well as using infinite element in model boundary to avoid static boundary effects. The features of internal forces and deformation of double-walled cofferdam with steel sheet piles at varied water heights are analyzed through comparative computations. Based on computational results and theoretical analyses, several conclusion remarks are drawn to provide valuable references for engineering practice and design.