Influence of distribution of nail lengths on deformation of soil nailing wall

The technique of soil nailing as a method of soil reinforcement in situ has been increasingly used to stabilize steep slopes in open excavations in the last three decades. Wall deformations need to be controlled by the allowable deformation level in designing of soil nailing wall especially when buildings or other underground facilities exit near the excavation. One of the most influence parameters on deformation of soil nailing wall is the distribution of nail lengths. The distribution of nail lengths in a soil nail wall can be selected as either uniform (only one nail length is used for the entire wall), or variable, where different nail lengths is used for soil nail wall. In this paper, soil nailing wall is modeled by 3D finite difference method and stage construction option was used to simulate construction of the soil nail wall. For an excavation with height of H, the soil nailing walls for a variety of distribution of nail lengths were designed based on limit equilibrium method and their global safety factor were considered equal to each other. Then ground movement of them was obtained by numerical model and was compared with each other.

Keywords:

Deformation , 3D finite difference , Nail length , Limit equilibrium method