Excavation in Abu Dhabi - Model Comparison with DeepEX, FREW, and Plaxis 2D
NSCC International in 2015 presented a paper on a deep excavation performance for the Emirates Pearl Tower and Bab El Qasr Hotel in Abu Dhabi.
The paper was presented in DFI 2015 by Dr. Walid Jaber & Amr Al Degwe. The 20m deep excavation was supported by a 1.0m thick reinforced diaphragm wall with most of the excavation braced with three levels of ground anchors.
In one corner, the excavation was supported by two levels of steel struts.
The performance of the excavation was instrumented for lateral displacements and support reactions. We reanalyzed published results with DeepEX software and obtained really good correspondance with observed behavior.
The original publication compared results from FREW and Plaxis 2D. Obviously a lot of assumptions can go into running an analysis.
So we went in and performed our evaluation by making similar assumptions to what the authors had presented in their publication.
When missing, some parameters were assumed based on engineering evaluation and any available literature.
The following table compares the results presented by the authors against our DeepEX evaluation:
Our DeepEX evaluation produced wall displacements that were closest to measured displacements. Support reactions were very close for all models.
From measured results it was also visible that maximum reactions were observed only in limited cases.
DeepEX produced smaller moments vs. FREW and comparable moments to Plaxis2D.
The bending moment results from the non-linear analysis of DeepEX were also verified with conventional analysis methods.
Given that measured displacements were much smaller than predicted we feel that the DeepEX bending moment results were closer to actual bending moment values.
Another interesting aspect was that reasonable modelling of the ground water table and flow conditions was an important factor in capturing realistic response. In this case, we found that using the full flow analysis was vital in capturing realistic loads.
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