1 6th Young Geotechnical Professionals Conference, Gold Coast Keynote lecture 8th July, 2004

USE OF INNOVATIVE IDEAS IN GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING Patrick K. Wong Coffey Geosciences Pty Ltd ABSTRACT
This keynote lecture describes the use of innovative ideas and concepts in geotechnical engineering. The message of this lecture is that innovation in engineering does not necessarily have to be new ways of doing things. Rather, it is more important to create value to projects by learning and applying ideas and concepts (whether old or new) in an innovative manner. A number of examples are given based on the authors recent experience, ranging from site investigation method, laboratory testing, numerical analysis, piled raft and pile group foundations, and soft ground engineering.

1. INTRODUCTION
I am delighted to have the opportunity to give this keynote address at the 6th Young Geotechnical Professionals Conference. In fact, it is my first keynote address ever, and I am humbled to be invited by the committee members to be one of the mentors in this conference. It is clear that the Young Geotechnical Professionals Conference is a vehicle for developing future leaders of the geosciences field. It provides a forum for us to share ideas and stimulate discussions, and to encourage each other to excel in this very challenging industry. However, in recent years, I have found a disturbing trend that there have been fewer top graduates entering and staying in the geotechnical field. Many bright graduates tend to be attracted by the apparently glamour jobs such as law, business management, and some even lured by well paid organisations to enter the financial industry after doing an engineering or science degree. Geotechnical professionals provide enormous contributions to society through our geosciences skills, yet our contributions are often undervalued. Nevertheless, my personal experience is that this profession can be extremely rewarding and fulfilling. So when I was asked to give this talk, I wanted to come up with a suitable topic that I hope would provide a little stimulation for the young geotechnical professionals. This morning, I shall present some example usage of innovative ideas in geotechnical engineering. I hope that the examples may be of interest to you, and encourage you in your quest to continue your inspirations and aspirations to make a successful career in this very worthwhile industry.

2. WHAT IS INNOVATION AND WHY IS IT REQUIRED

The word "innovate" comes from the Middle French word "innovacyon" meaning "renewal" or "new way of doing things. But is merely being new good enough, and does it have to be actually new to qualify for a solution being innovative? Personally, I think not; a new idea alone is not necessarily innovative if it does not create value. I strongly believe that innovative solutions can be developed by creating value through implementing a concept, whether it is old or new. Sometimes innovative solutions may even be created by a borrowed idea, but applied in a different way or to a new problem. Thus I believe that creating value is the cornerstone of innovation. This belief of mine may be influenced by the fact that I have been a consultant all my life, and I have come to the realisation that all innovations must focus on creating value for the client. To this end, it does not matter whether you are a consultant or not, as your client may be your boss, the public, or a private customer. If you maintain a desire to understand your clients need, and a desire to create value for your client, then this will act as the best stimulator for innovation. Human beings have a hunger for continuing improvement in the quality of life. In this modern world, there will be an increasing demand for buildings, transportation systems, mineral mines and various infrastructures associated with natural resources and manufacturing industries. Reducing cost is essential, but building sustainable and environmentally friendly developments is equally important. In Australia, the use of Design and Construct, Build Own Operate and Transfer, and Alliance methods of project delivery in recent times has provided more opportunities for engineering innovations. Owners, developers, designers and contractors are working more closely than in the past, with the desire to come up with more cost-effective, lower risk, and environmentally sustainable engineering solutions. Due to the variability of geology, soil and rock properties, and groundwater regime, geotechnical aspects often present the greatest risks, opportunities, and challenges and to civil and building projects. Geotechnical engineering is also one

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of the least codified disciplines of engineering, which to me is an advantage rather than a drawback as it presents in my opinion more opportunities for innovation provided the basic geological and geotechnical principles are understood and applied appropriately. In the following sections, I shall present a series of examples of the application of innovative ideas in geotechnical engineering to solve challenging problems. Hopefully, these examples will illustrate that one does not have to be totally original or use new ideas to be considered innovative and create value for the project and client.

3. EXAMPLES OF INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS IN GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING

3.1.

Site Uniformity Borehole Seismic Testing

Whiteley (1990) believes that there is still an under-utilisation of geophysics in geotechnical engineering due principally to poor understanding of the process by which meaningful geophysical information is obtained. In recent years, the application of non-destructive geophysics investigation techniques has increased due to advance in equipment, computation and interpretation software, and education of geotechnical engineers and geologists regarding the benefit of geophysical investigations. Conventional investigations such as by drilling boreholes will only provide information at discrete locations. When rapid changes in ground conditions exists, such as in fault zones, karst formations and mined cavities, conventional drilling investigation alone is unlikely to be adequate. With the advance in Seismic Tomographic Imaging techniques, Site Uniformity Borehole Seismic Testing (Whiteley, 2003) is now available to assess the uniformity of the ground as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Site Uniformity Borehole Seismic Testing (SUBS) SUBS testing uses seismic energy to determine variations in ground conditions around the borehole at radial distances from the hole. A number of radial traverses are carried out to obtain a three-dimensional picture of the ground around the borehole, and therefore substantially increases the amount of subsurface soil and rock which can be investigated from a single borehole. In SUBS testing, an array of hydrophones is lowered into the borehole, and seismic energy is generated with an impact source near the collar of the borehole. The source is successively placed at closely spaced locations around the borehole at distances varying up to at least the depth to the deepest in-hole detector. This provides a radius of investigation for the SUB test which is approximately equal to the hole depth. Disturbed ground or cavities within the zone of investigation will result in zones of lower seismic velocities compared to the surrounding ground, and when the data is processed using Seismic Tomographic Imaging techniques, a three-dimensional image of the nonuniformity is detected, which can then be targeted for further physical investigations. We have used this method successfully to assist the assessment of the likelihood of old bord and pillar coal mine workings to 30m depth beneath an area of proposed residential development in Newcastle, and also to investigate the presence of shear zones, faults, and stress relieved zones beneath palaeochannels for major tunnel projects in Sydney.

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3.2.

Use of Limit State Design Approach to Our Advantage 3.2.1. Limit State Design Criteria

The Limit State Design approach requires the following conditions be met (Poulos 1991): Serviceability Limit State Strength Limit State Deflections must satisfy the design deflection criteria under serviceability loading conditions g Rug S* , and, s Rus S* where: g = geotechnical strength reduction factor Rug = ultimate geotechnical capacity of the foundation system s = structural strength reduction factor Rus = ultimate structural capacity of the foundation system S* = design action effect from factored loads and moments

I shall now show two examples where the above Limit State Design approach has been used innovatively for the design of cost-effective piled rafts and pile groups.

3.2.2. Piled Raft for the Runnymeade Project at Penang, Malaysia

For piled raft design, it is a well recognised and accepted practice that the piles do not need to be designed to have conventional geotechnical factors of safety. The piles could be regarded as settlement reducers and as long as the entire foundation system has a satisfactory factor of safety, and the system performs satisfactorily with respect to serviceability criteria, some of the piles can be designed to yield under ultimate load conditions. This piled raft design concept is described by Poulos 1989 in the 29th Rankin Lecture. The proposed Runnymeade Tower project in Penang occupies an area of about 90m by 76m with a single level underground basement car park over the entire building footprint. The central office tower is 21 storeys in height and occupies an area of 41m by 35m, with the remaining area of the site occupied by a two storey retail podium. The site is underlain by deep marine sediments (>120m), and the upper 13.5m of the profile comprised very soft to firm marine clay. The original foundation design required the use of large diameter bored piles to over 50m depth to carry column loads that are in excess of 20MN. In order to come up with a more economical foundation solution for the contractor, an innovative piled raft solution was adopted, comprising a combination of 500mm and 600mm diameter prestressed spun piles supporting a raft having a thickness of 500mm in the podium area and 1700mm in the tower area. The upper 8m of the very soft to soft clay layer was stiffened by the use of lime pile improvement (see Section 3.3) to improve the performance of the raft. In all, 293 piles (having lengths of 23.5m for the podium and 53m for the tower) were used instead of over 400 piles that would have had to be used if a conventional pile foundation design were adopted. The detailed design of the piled raft involved the use of numerical analysis methods to ensure that performance of the raft and building will be satisfactory under serviceability loading, and for structural design of the piles to be carried out under ultimate load conditions. In brief, the following summary illustrates the application of the Limit State principle for justifying the strength limit state component of the design criteria: The net factored dead and live ultimate loads minus the buoyant weight of the structure, S*, was 1207MN. The ultimate design bearing capacity of raft, R*ug(raft), was assessed to be 765MN based on ultimate bearing pressure of 250kPa after lime piling ground improvement, and a geotechnical strength reduction factor, g(raft) of 0.5. The design ultimate pile capacity of the 293 piles, R*ug(piles) was 914MN using a geotechnical strength reduction factor, g(pile) of 0.7 with a program of dynamic pile and static pile load testing carried out. Therefore, the total design ultimate piled raft capacity, R*ug = 765 + 914 = 1679MN > S*.

In fact, the number of piles required was dictated by the serviceability criteria and also the structural capacity of the pile shaft. For example, the 600mm diameter spun piles beneath the core was assessed to have an ultimate geotechnical capacity of 6000kN each, with a design ultimate capacity of 4200kN. However, the allowable structural capacity of the pile shaft was only 3600kN.

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The adopted layout of the piled raft is shown in Figure 2 below.

Core area modelled as 25m thick to model rigid central core, although raft is only 1.7m thick

1.7m thick raft with 172 nos. 53m long by 600mm diameter spun piles within Tower area

0.5m thick raft with 121 nos. 23.5m long spun piles (87 nos. 500mm dia. & 34 nos. 600mm dia.) within Podium area

Note: some pile locations shown on this model represent pile groups of 1, 2, or 3 piles

Figure 2 Adopted Raft and Piling Layout The numerical analysis carried out in the detailed design stage also enabled the distribution of the piles to be optimised, as it can be seen in Figure 2 that the piles were found to be more effective in supporting the tower structure if they were concentrated along the edges and corner of the tower core rather than a uniform distribution. Measured settlement of the Tower ranged from 15mm to 28mm with an average of about 21mm soon after completion of the structure.

3.2.3. The Application of Geotechnical Strength Reduction Factors in Pile Group Analysis
Generally, I have always resisted the application of geotechnical strength reduction factors during the analysis of a pile group. The reason for this is that by doing so, the modelled behaviour of the pile group may be unrealistic and in some situations under-estimate the actual loads that could be transferred to the piles and cause the design to be unsafe structurally by limiting the capacity of the pile in the analysis. There are, however, circumstances that the use of innovative thinking could be applied in pile group analysis to able cost-effective and safe solution to be derived. For example, lets consider a group of piles connected by a relatively rigid pile cap supporting a bridge pier as shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3 Example of Pile Group Connected By Rigid Pile Cap

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When the pile group is subjected to combined vertical, horizontal and moment loading, the outer pile in the direction of the moment loading will result in the highest axial compression. If the soil properties are reduced by the strength reduction factor first, this outer pile will reach a limiting load equivalent to the design ultimate geotechnical capacity of the pile. This is not necessarily a problem geotechnically because load redistribution to the other piles will occur when the outer pile yields, provided the pile group performance is satisfactory. However, as the actual ultimate geotechnical capacity of the pile is likely to be higher, the outer pile may actually attract more load than the prediction with factored soil properties. If the structural design of the pile is based on the factored down limiting load, a brittle structural failure of the outer pile may occur which may lead to undesirable consequences. In fact, for a truly rigid pile cap, the outer piles will always end up taking a greater axial load than the internal piles even under axial loading only. Therefore, one may be tempted to ask the question: should the outer piles be designed to have a larger diameter or longer than the internal piles? The reader should bear in mind at this stage that a larger, stiffer outer pile would in turn attract greater load. In a current project involving the design of a heavily load river pier across the Murray River in NSW, we are adopting a different approach. Large diameter piles are to be driven into very dense sands to support the bridge pier. Two sets of analyses were carried out. The first set of analysis used reduced soil properties to assess the minimum design geotechnical ultimate capacity and geotechnical design action effect of the pile (i.e. Rug* = Sg*), and also to ensure that under Ultimate Limit State conditions, the pile group will perform satisfactorily. The second set of analysis used unfactored soil properties to derive the design action effect for structural design purposes (i.e. Ss*). By doing this, Rug* of the pile is limited to about 10.5MN and a dynamic test load is to be carried out to prove a Rug of 15MN. However, the pile will be designed structurally to resist a design action effect, Ss*, of 13.6MN from the second set of analysis. Had the latter set of analysis been carried out only and used for both structural and geotechnical design, longer outer piles would have been required and the test load would increase to 19.4MN, and the pile would be more expensive to construct and to test. We could even take the above concept one step further, in that there may be advantages in certain circumstances to make the corner piles of a group of piles connected by a rigid pile cap softer instead of stiffer so that the applied vertical load would be distributed more evenly amongst all the piles.

3.2.4. Use of Chemical Lime Piles to Assist Basement Excavation and Piled Raft Design
The use of lime piles to improve soft grounds is not new. It was originated by the Scandinavian decades ago to improve stability and reduce settlement for road embankments, and lime piles used these days still largely comprise in-situ mixing of lime into the soft soil to form stiffened columns. In recent times, the Japanese has developed a special granulated chemical quick lime, and a technique to install pure lime piles into the ground without mixing as shown in Figure 4 below.
SIDE HOPPER LIME AGGREGATES

CASING PIPE

LIME PILE FORMED

COMPRESSED AIR APPLIED TO DISCHARGE LIME INTO HOLE AS CASING IS WITHDRAWN

Figure 4 Chemical Lime Pile Installation Process The chemical lime piles produce both a consolidation and strength gain effect on the treated soil, without additional loading, via lateral expansion of the lime columns as they absorb water from the soft soil. These lime columns have the following effects on the adjacent soil:

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a. b.

c.

Consolidation / dewatering effect Ion exchange effect Pozzolanic effect

The process of strength gain and modulus increase due to the consolidation/dewatering effect is described by Onoda Chemical (undated), and Wong (2004). Utilising this process, chemical lime piles were used at the Runnymeade Tower project (see Section 3.2.2) for the following purposes: Lime piles were installed at 1.7m grid spacing in a 4m zone adjacent to the excavation boundary to increase the passive resistance of the soft soils to improve stability of the 4m deep excavation shoring and to reduce lateral deflections to limit the risk of damage to adjacent properties. Lime piles were installed at 2m grid spacing for the rest of the site to improve traffickability for piling rigs and other construction equipment following excavation and to assist design of the piled raft.

Due to the lime piles, the shear strength of the soft clay increased from about 17kPa (before treatment) to well over 30kPa to 40kPa as shown in Figure 5.

Design Strength 25kPa

Figure 5 Comparison of Shear Vane Strengths Before and After Lime Piling

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3.2.5. Long-term Creep of Compacted Fill in a Deep Backfilled Quarry

We are currently involved in a residential development over a 20m deep shale quarry to be backfilled with compacted materials in a suburb of Sydney. The quarry will be backfilled over several years using materials derived from basement excavations of building projects and tunnel spoils from civil infrastructure projects in the Sydney area. The backfill materials could be a mixture of building rubble (concrete and bricks), shale, and/or sandstone Due to the unusual depth of filling and it is likely that the groundwater level in the quarry will rise following completion of filling, we were concern about the long-term creep behaviour of the compacted fill with respect to post-construction settlements, particularly if materials that are susceptible to breakdown, such as shale, is used as the backfill material. Being the first of this kind of development in Sydney, we convinced the client that an innovative assessment approach should be carried out. Project specific consolidation apparatus were made up to enable long-term measurements of creep for compacted shale and sandstone samples under various loads (to simulate the depth of the fill) to be made over 6 to 12 months. The apparatus (see Figure 6 below), will enable the samples to be saturated following a period of consolidation at compacted moisture content.

Figure 6 Long-term Consolidation Apparatus for Assessment of Creep and Inundation Settlement Although the concept of the testing is no different to the standard laboratory Oedometer, the work won an in-house Company Innovations Award for the first long-term consolidation testing in a commercial environment and the valuable results that will enable our client to reduce development risks. Already, after about 6 months, the results from the testing has indicated significantly higher creep strains in compacted shale samples compared to sandstone samples, and we hope that with on-going testing, the results could be used to control the proportion and layering of the different types of fill to be used in backfilling the quarry, thus better managing the risks associated with settlement beneath proposed structures and associated infrastructure.

3.2.6. Dynamic Compaction to Improve Poorly Compacted Fill for Residential Development
As indicated in the preceding section, deep fills can potentially undergo significant creep and collapse settlement upon inundation, particularly if fill is placed at low Relative Densities. Dynamic Compaction (i.e. dropping of a heavy pounder from large heights) has been used to compact landfill sites and dredged sand reclamations, but the effectiveness of this method in treating clay fills is uncertain, and to our knowledge, has not been used for residential developments founded on deep man-made fill in Australia. A Dynamic Compaction trial is currently being carried out to compact up to about 8m of clay fill using a 13 tonne pounder dropped from a height of 15m, with the purpose of enabling the land to be used for residential development. Different foot print pounder sizes are being tried to optimise compaction uniformity and effective depth of compaction. Preliminary results are showing promise and we hope to be able to publish the results in future.

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3.2.7. Dynamic Replacement

You would have heard of Dynamic Compaction (see Section 3.2.6 above) and Stone Columns (also known asVibroReplacement) for the treatment of soft grounds. Put the two together and we have an innovative ground treatment technique known as Dynamic Replacement. In Dynamic Replacement, large diameter stone columns are introduced into the ground by a heavy weight dropped repeatedly onto a gravel layer while the craters created by the impact of the heavy weight are backfilled with gravel during the process as shown in Figure 7. The resulting stone columns are significantly larger in diameter, have higher load carrying capacity, more rapid to install, and hence more economical compared with the conventional Stone Column ground treatment method. The disadvantage of dynamic replacement, however, is that there is a limiting depth to which the DR stone columns can be installed, and at which the gravel near the top of the columns will tend to heave rather than being pushed downwards by the falling weight. Some recent use of dynamic replacement has been reported by Varaksin et al (1994).

Figure 7 Dynamic Replacement Installation A recent use of this ground improvement technique and its design approach are described by Wong and Lacazedieu (2004), and Wong (2004). Dynamic replacement was adopted as the ground treatment solution for the Alexandria City Centre project in Egypt during 2001 and 2002. The project involved the construction of a very large shopping centre on a 220,000m2 site in Alexandria, Egypt. The initial earthworks contract required reclamation of part of a lake. Very soft, compressible organic clay deposits existed up to 9m deep in places beneath the lakebed. The specification required the site to be raised by 2m above the lake water level. The design criteria was for post-construction settlement under the specified loads to not cause the site to drop below the design level, and for differential settlements to be within design tolerance. In particular, proposed tiled floors required stringent differential settlement limits of 1 in 1000. The design column load was 700kN, and columns were to be supported on shallow footings founded at 1.5m depth below bulk earthworks level. However, as the layout of the buildings was not finalised at the time of the earthworks design, the challenge was to come up with an economical earthworks/ground treatment strategy to enable shallow footings to be adopted at the site, irrespective of the building column locations. Although the dynamic replacement columns would be limited in depth, it was decided that dynamic replacement in conjunction with preloading was the most cost-effective approach to reduce settlement and thereby minimise the amount of fill required for the reclamation and preloading. After placement of a 1.7m thick working platform to provide access, the maximum depth of penetration of the dynamic replacement columns was assessed to be 6.5m, thereby leaving about 2.2m thickness of the soft clay layer (for a design soft clay thickness of 7m) untreated by dynamic replacement but would be improved by preloading. Details of the design approach are published in Wong (2004). In summary, it involved initial one-dimensional settlement analysis using conventional consolidation theory of the untreated soil, preliminary assessment of settlement

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reduction that could be achieved using analytical solutions, followed by a three-dimensional finite element analysis using FLAC 3D (Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua, ITASCA (1999)). The adopted solution comprised columns up to about 2.5m diameter at a spacing of 5.5m as shown in Figure 8 below, with an overall settlement reduction of about 50% during the reclamation and preloading, and satisfactory performance of the shopping centre subsequently constructed. The field settlement results are shown in Figure 9, together with the design prediction. 700kN 700kN

Wick Drains DR Columns

Structural Fill Sand Blanket

5 to 9m Soft Soil

Stiff or medium dense soils

Figure 8 Dynamic Replacement Adopted for Alexandria City-Centre Project

Time (days)
0 0.000 0.100 0.200 0.300 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

Initial settlement of about 0.2m (estimated by survey) due to placement of 1.7m of working platform above lakebed before instrumentation installed.

Settlement (m)

0.400 0.500 0.600 0.700 0.800 0.900 1.000

Legend:

Measured Settlement Predicted Settlement

Figure 9 Settlement Monitoring Results

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3.2.8. Mass Stabilisation of Soft Ground

Most of you would have seen a cake mixer at work, some of you may even have used one if you are domesticated enough. The Finnish have adopted this concept and came up with a Power Mix machine that is attached to a hydraulic excavator to perform in-situ mass stabilisation of soft soils to a depth of up to 5m as shown in Figure 10 below.

Direction of advance

Figure 10 ALLU Power Mix for In-situ Mass Stabilisation of Soft Invented in Finland about 10 years ago, the method involves mixing the upper 3 to 5m of the soft soils with a mixture of cement, lime, fly ash, or blast furnace slag stabilizing agent. The stabilisation process may be carried out in situ, with the machine working in a 5m x 5m plan area, moving normally to the direction of advance such that a 5m wide panel could be stabilised across the site. The stabilised area is usually sufficiently strong to support the excavator the following day for the stabilisation work to advance further. Alternatively, the material could be excavated in placed in a temporary container (or pit) for the stabilisation to be carried out, and the stabilised material excavated and the process repeated. This Finnish invention offers a new way of stabilising soft ground, including peat and sludge, acid sulfate soils, and even contaminated soils. The Allu Power Mix is currently being used in Norway to stabilise contaminated soil in Trondheim harbour. The pilot project is to stabilise 15000 m of dredged spoil from the bottom of the sea, which is contaminated with PCB, PAH, TBT and heavy metals. This project started in the beginning of 2003 and is expected to be finished at the end of 2004. Coffey is currently investigating whether this method could be applied economically in-situ to soft, acid sulfate soils (ASS) to be excavated for a harbour and residential development at the south coast of NSW. The purposes are to improve the strength and stiffness of the soft soils to enable steeper batters to be excavated, thereby reducing the amount of ASS to be excavated, and to lime neutralise the ASS such that when excavated, the material could be disposed on-site or reused as compacted structural fill as an alternative to off-shore disposal or other expensive disposal options.

3.2.9. Innovative Use of 2D Numerical Analysis to Solve a Complex 3D Problem

Last year, we were involved in the design of a 16m diameter by 30m deep shaft for a power cable project in Singapore. The shaft had two 6m diameter tunnels connected to it towards the base. The shaft is a reinforced concrete diaphragm wall structure founded in saturated alluvium and extremely weathered rock. Normally, the longitudinal bending moment on the shaft wall resulting from the earth and water pressures acting on the shaft wall is relatively low due to the hoop stress developed around the circular structure. However, this is not the case in the concrete panel between the tunnel breakout areas. The original structural design of this panel was conservatively based on the panel having to span vertically between the tunnel breakouts. The reinforcing cage for this panel of the diaphragm wall section over the depth interval of the tunnels was therefore more heavily reinforced. During construction of the shaft, the presence of a highly irregular and permeable limestone surface below the toe of the diaphragm wall was found to be accidentally connected to the wall via inclinometer holes that were drilled through the wall into the limestone some 5m below the toe of the wall. As a result, a seepage path was established, and probably via a piping mechanism, the weathered rock material separating the shaft floor and the limestone was disturbed and

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caused the shaft to flood during construction. To allow the shaft to be completed safely, it was decided to raise the breakout points of the tunnels and to redesign the tunnel vertical alignments with transition zones near the shaft. The only trouble was, the more heavily reinforced section of the wall (i.e. the panel between the two original tunnel breakout points) were now redundant and the panel between the new breakout points was not more heavily reinforced. In order to assess if the existing reinforcement in the new location of the tunnel breakout panel was sufficient, numerical analysis had to be performed. At that time, Coffey had just purchased the three dimensional finite element program PLAXIS 3D, but we were not yet confident in using the program for this complex three-dimensional problem in the limited time available. The design team decided to perform a 2D numerical analysis instead by applying innovative thinking that subsequently won an in-house Company Innovations Award. The problem was solved by first performing a 2D plane stress analysis of the developed plane of the shaft wall as shown in Figure 11 below to assess the hoop stress distribution around the panel between the new tunnel breakouts. Plan (NTS) Calculated Stress Distribution on Developed Wall

Shaft Tunnel breakouts

Figure 11 2D Plane Stress Analysis on Shaft Wall to Assess Distribution of Hoop Stress Around Tunnel Openings From this initial analysis, it can be observed that the panel between the tunnel openings carry at least about 10% of the hoop stress. Therefore, instead of assuming that the panel has to fully span between the tunnel openings in the vertical direction, some allowance can be made for a reduced hoop stress to provide lateral support to the panel. A second set of 2D plane strain numerical analysis was then carried out to assess the bending moment and deflections of the panel by treating the diaphragm wall as a strutted retaining wall as shown in Figure 12. The strut stiffness above and below the tunnel openings was worked out to provide equivalent radial inwards deformation of the shaft wall due to the full hoop forces, while the strut stiffness in the panel between the tunnel openings was reduced to 10% of the adjacent struts.

Shaft Centreline Struts Forces Representing Full Hoop Forces Reduced Strut Forces Adjacent to Tunnel Openings

Shaft Wall

Finite Element Mesh of Soil

Shaft Wall Adjacent to Tunnel Openings

Figure 12 2D Analysis of Bending Moment in Panel Between Tunnel Openings

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By conducting the above analyses, the small amount of hoop stress within the panel between the openings was found to be sufficient to reduce the bending moment in the panel to low enough levels for the tunnel openings to be raised without remedial works to the panel.

4. CONCLUSION
I hope the above examples provide sufficient evidence to convince you that it is fun to be innovative, and that you do not have to be particularly clever to apply innovative thinking to geotechnical engineering. The important think is to apply it, and apply it often. A long time ago, Confucius supposedly said: I see and I forget; I hear and I remember; I do and I understand. However, I rather like the updated version by Joyce Wycoff (2004), the Co-Founder of the InnovationNetwork, who said: I see possibilities and I show up; I have fun and I am energized; I question and I open the space for learning; I multi-sense and I remember; I do and I understand; I reflect and integrate and I can share with others; I apply to real life and I get results. Go forth and seek the glories of the mind. Create value for your projects by applying innovative thinking and ideas.

5. REFERENCES
ITASCA (1999) 3D FLAC Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua. User Manual. ITASCA Group, USA. Onoda Chemical Co. Ltd. (undated) Deep Soil Stabilisation Method Chemico-pile Method Technical Manual. Poulos, H.G. (1989) Pile Behaviour Theory and Application, 29th Rankin Lecture, Geotechnique, 39(3): pp365-415. Poulos, H.G. (1991) Pile Group Design by Conventional and Limit State Approaches Australian Geomechanics Journal No.20 October 1991. Varaksin S., Liausu P., Berger P., & Spaulding, C. (1994) Optimisation Of Dynamic Consolidation And Dynamic Replacement Pillars To Limit Surface Deformations Of Man Made Fills Overlaying Heterogeneous Soft Subsoil Proceedings of seminar organised by the Geotechnical Division of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers on Ground Improvement Methods 103 - 116. Whiteley, R.J. (1990) Keynote lecture: Advances In Engineering Seismics 6th International Congress International Association of Engineering Geology. Balkema (Pub) 813 825 Whiteley, R.J. (2003) Reducing Tunnelling Risks with Seismic Imaging, Proc. Underground Construction, London 24-25 September 2003, 585-594 Wong P. K. and Lacazedieu M. (2004) Dynamic Replacement Ground Improvement Field Performance Versus Design Predictions for the Alexandria City Centre Project in Egypt to be published in The A. W. Skempton Memorial Conference, 29 to 31 March 2004, London. Wong P. K. (2004) Ground Improvement Case Studies Chemical Lime Piles and Dynamic Replacement Australian Geomechanics Society Jnl Vol 39 No.2 June 2004. Wycoff Joyce (2004) InnovationDNATM Web Page