MODELLING OF SOIL NAILING CONSTRUCTION BY 3-DIMENSIONAL FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

In this paper, the development of deformations and axial and bending stresses in the nails, and the development of strains in the material in the wall and behind are calculated by three dimensional finite element analysis. This gives an insight into the soil-nail interaction as well as into the failure mechanisms of the nailed soil system during excavation. Eight-node 3-D finite elements have been used successfully to model reinforced soil wall construction. The process was then reversed to model soil nailing construction. A more advanced 14-node element was used to give more flexibility than the 8-node brick and to alleviate the storage and computation time problems encountered in the use of 20-node bricks. Two-dimensional plane strain finite element analysis cannot comprehensively model stress transfer between soil and nails. The results obtained from the 3-D analyses are compared with observations. (A) For the covering abstract see IRRD 860485.