GEOINDEX

IGC 2006, 14-16 December 2006, Chennai, INDIA

UNDERPASS AT AIR FORCE STATION YELAHANKA, BANGALORE

Sivakumar Babu G. L.
Srinivasa Murthy B. R.
Amit Srivastava
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
gls@civil.iisc.ernet.in

ABSTRACT: An underpass was constructed recently in Bangalore using soil nailing, box jacking and the geotechnical
aspects and these techniques are reported in this paper. The construction procedure and various aspects of the
construction are also discussed. Soil nailing technique has been used extensively throughout the project to improve the
stability of excavated vertical cuts. Soil nailing and the underpass are examined by detailed numerical analysis using
FLAC3D. A few results of the analysis of excavations stabilized using nailing and the construction of underpass are given
in the paper.
1. INTRODUCTION
For the construction of underpasses, soil nailing and box
jacking techniques have been used. With the soil nailing,
stabilization of excavations was made for approach roads
of the underpass and, box jacking was used to push and
place the concrete box elements without disturbing the
traffic above. The concept of soil nailing consists of
placing the closely spaced soil nails to increase the overall
shear strength of the in-situ soil and restrain its
displacements during and after excavation. The main
advantage of the soil nailing lies in its relatively low cost
and requires small equipment to drive the nails, as
compared to conventional construction of retaining wall
system and also in terms of saving of space and time
without interrupting the moving traffic on the road above.
The adaptability of soil nailing to different site conditions
and its capacity to withstand large total and differential
settlements than conventional structures, particularly in
earthquake prone areas prompts engineers for its use.
1.1

Box jacking / tunneling

is proposed. A purpose designed tunneling shield is

provided sometimes at its leading end, and thrust jacks are
provided at its rear end reacting against a jacking beam.
The box is then jacked slowly through the ground under
the road/railway in a carefully controlled tunneling
operation. Excavation and jacking take place alternately in
small increments of advance. Measures are taken to
ensure stability of the tunnel face and to prevent the
ground from being dragged forward by the advancing box.
When the box has reached its final position, jacking
equipments are removed, and bridge construction is
completed with the addition of wing walls and road
pavement. The principal benefits of jacked box tunneling
are:
A non-intrusive construction method.
Minimal disturbance to surface infrastructure.
Traffic flows maintained throughout the construction
period.
An efficient structural and aesthetically elegant form of
elements.
1.2

It is a non-intrusive method for constructing a new underbridge, culvert or subway beneath existing surface
infrastructure, for example railways and highways. The
method enables traffic flows to be maintained throughout the construction period, and maintained with only
minor restrictions during the brief period of tunneling.
The inconvenience and costs of disruption to
infrastructure and traffic flows experienced with
traditional construction methods can be avoided.
Typically, an open-ended reinforced concrete box is cast
on a jacking base adjacent to the road where the underpass

Soil nailing

The in-situ soil has good strength properties and possesses

undrained cohesion, which cannot be relied upon under
saturated conditions. The stability of vertical cut is
analyzed and it was found that the unsupported vertical
cut is not safe (FS < 1.5). Hence soil nailing is used to
impart stability to the existing vertical cut of 6.8 m high.
The design of soil nailing is based on conventional
method of resisting the earth pressures of the cut
considering the pull out resistance of the soil nail system
and the tensile capacity of the nails and a configuration of

759

IGC 2006, 14-16 December 2006, Chennai, INDIA

20 mm diameter tor steel bars of 5.0 m length at a spacing

of 500 x 500 mm is arrived at. The nails of required
length, diameter and spacing were driven using
jackhammer. Wire mesh is attached to the soil surface and
welded to the nails and the surface is shotcreted with 75
mm lean concrete mix. Figure 1 shows the details of soilreinforced section. Using similar procedure, two nailed
walls were constructed and the performance has been
found to be satisfactory (Srinivasa Murthy et al. 2002),
Sivakumar Babu et al. 2002) and the technique has been
implemented in many excavation projects.
Fig. 1 Soil nailing

For the numerical analysis, FLAC3D is used to examine

the response of the vertical cut with soil nailing. The
behavior of soil is assumed elastic perfectly plastic MohrCoulomb model. Nails were modeled as elastic elements.
The material properties of the soil and nails used are
shown in Table 1. It was assumed that the interface
elements show a minor effect and hence, neglected.
Table 1. Material properties of soil and nails
Parameter

Red soil

Dry unit weight of

soil (dry)

18 kN/m3

Bulk unit weight

(bulk)

19 kN/m3

Young's modulus (Es)

Cohesion (c)

Nail

Property

20,000 kN/m2
15 kN/m2

Friction angle ()

26

Poisson's ratio (s)

0.28

Young's modulus (En)

Nail diameter (d)
Poisson's ratio (n)

210E06 kN/m2
0.02 m
0.30

2.

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS WITH FLAC3D

FLAC (Itasca, 2000) is an explicit finite difference code

that performs a Lagrangian analysis. It uses explicit time
marching method to solve governing field equations in
which every derivative in the set of governing equations is
replaced directly by algebraic expressions written in terms
of field variables (i.e. stress, displacement) at discrete
points in space. The general calculation procedure in one
time step for every cycle around the loop first evokes the
equation of motion to derive new velocities and forces,
and then strain rates are calculated from the velocities and
new stresses from strain rates. The time step is chosen so
small that the information cannot physically pass from one
element to another element. The central concept for the
explicit method is that the calculational wave speed
always keeps ahead of the physical wave speed, so that
the equation always operates on known values that are
fixed for the duration of the calculation. For the analysis,
the medium is divided into a finite difference mesh of
polyhedral elements. Internally, it is subdivided into two
overlaid set of tetrahedra. The force vector exerted on
each node is taken to be the mean of the two force vectors
exerted by the two over laid tetrahedra. The convergence
criterion is the nodal unbalanced force from the
neighboring elements. For the present study, the
unbalanced force of each node is normalized by the
gravitational force acting on that node. A simulation is
considered to have converged when the normalized
unbalanced force of every node in the mesh is less than
10-3.
Additionally, it provides an alternative to traditional limit
equilibrium programs to determine factor of safety. Limit
equilibrium codes use an approximate scheme typically
based on the method of slices in which a number of
assumptions are made (e.g., the location and angle of
interslice forces). Several assumed failure surfaces are
tested, and the one giving the lowest factor of safety is
chosen. Equilibrium is only satisfied on an idealized set of
surfaces. In contrast, the fast Lagrangian analysis continua
provide a full solution of the coupled stress/displacement,
equilibrium and constitutive equations. Given a set of
properties, the system is determined to be stable or
unstable. By automatically performing a series of
simulations while changing the strength properties
strength reduction technique, the factor of safety can
be found corresponding to the point of stability, and the
critical failure (slip) surface can be located. Although, it
does take longer to determine a factor of safety than a
limit equilibrium program, yet it provides several
advantages over a limit equilibrium solution (e.g.,Dawson
and Roth, 1999, and Cala and Flisiak, 2001). Matsui and
San (1992) reported a simple method of evaluation of
stability termed as strength reduction method using results

760

IGC 2006, 14-16 December 2006, Chennai, INDIA

of finite element analysis. In this method, the strength

Parameters tan and c of the soil are successfully
reduced until failure of the system occurs (equation 1).

tan input
tan reduced

c input
c reduced

= 1.0 --------------------- (1)

The parameters with the subscript 'input' refer to the input

properties and parameters with the subscript 'reduced'
refer to the reduced properties. Initially the ratio is set to
1.0 at the start of a calculation to set all material strengths
to their actual values as shown in equation (1). The
strength parameters are successively reduced until failure
of the structure occurs. At this point, the factor of safety is
given by equation 2.

FS =

element and not much difference were observed in both

the cases (less than 20 mm).
Detailed investigations on the behavior of reinforced soil
structures indicate that maximum/limiting displacements
at the crest in the range of 1% of the excavation depth and
hence satisfactory as the value is less than the reported
values from literature.
FLAC3D 2.10
Step 4743 Model Perspective
17:00:06 Fri Jul 14 2006
Center:
X: 5.000e+000
Y: 5.000e+000
Z: 4.998e+000
Dist: 3.265e+001

Contour of Displacement Mag.

Magfac = 1.000e+000
0.0000e+000 to 0.0000e+000
0.0000e+000 to 2.0000e-001
2.0000e-001 to 4.0000e-001
4.0000e-001 to 6.0000e-001
6.0000e-001 to 8.0000e-001
8.0000e-001 to 1.0000e+000
1.0000e+000 to 1.2000e+000
1.2000e+000 to 1.4000e+000
1.4000e+000 to 1.6000e+000
1.6000e+000 to 1.6807e+000
Interval = 2.0e-001

available strength ---------------------------- (2)

strength at failure

Table 2 presents the results obtained from the numerical

analysis. Factor of safety using strength reduction method
shows that the vertical cut without nails was unsafe with a
FS of 0.52 and the same vertical cut has been strengthened
using nails (TOR steel bars) of 20 mm diameter and the
factor safety improved to 1.48 indicating that the vertical
cut is safe and stable with the provision of soil nails.

amit

Fig. 2(a) vertical wall without soil nail

FLAC3D 2.10
Step 4743 Model Perspective
16:55:37 Fri Jul 14 2006

Table 2. Results of the numerical analysis

Case

FS

Displacement
(mm)

Shear Strain (%)

0.52

1600

17.12

II

1.48

13.38

0.20

Rotation:
X: 10.000
Y: 0.000
Z: 0.000
Mag.:
1
Ang.: 22.500

Center:
X: 5.000e+000
Y: 5.000e+000
Z: 4.998e+000
Dist: 3.434e+001

Rotation:
X: 20.000
Y: 0.000
Z: 10.000
Mag.:
1
Ang.: 22.500

Contour of Displacement Mag.

Magfac = 1.000e+000
0.0000e+000 to 0.0000e+000
0.0000e+000 to 1.0000e-002
1.0000e-002 to 2.0000e-002
2.0000e-002 to 3.0000e-002
3.0000e-002 to 4.0000e-002
4.0000e-002 to 5.0000e-002
5.0000e-002 to 6.0000e-002
6.0000e-002 to 7.0000e-002
7.0000e-002 to 8.0000e-002
8.0000e-002 to 9.0000e-002
9.0000e-002 to 1.0000e-001
1.0000e-001 to 1.1000e-001
1.1000e-001 to 1.2000e-001
1.2000e-001 to 1.3000e-001
1.3000e-001 to 1.3388e-001
Interval = 1.0e-002

Placement of nails not only improves the stability but also

reduces the deformations. Figure 2(a) and Figure 2(b)
show the deformation of the vertical wall without and
with soil nails. It is evident that considerable improvement
in deformation is achieved with soil nails.
The results are also examined in-terms of shear strains;
maximum shear strain in the case of un-reinforced vertical
cut is 17.12% that reduced to 0.2% indicating that the
shear strains have been transferred to the reinforcement.
The maximum mobilized tensile force is 42.67 kN, this
value is less than the maximum tensile capacity of the
reinforcement bar and hence safe under tensile
failure/pullout failure. In addition the analysis was carried
out with facing element and different fixities to the facing

cable Axial Force

Magfac = 1.000e+000
amit

Fig. 2(b) Vertical cut with soil nailing

3. BOX JACKING TECHNIQUE
Box jacking technique is used to place the elements in
position and six elements of 6 m length each and a width
of 11.4m having two vents for vehicular traffic and a third
vent at the center for pedestrian traffic is provided.

761

IGC 2006, 14-16 December 2006, Chennai, INDIA

analysis shows that use of nailed retaining structures helps

considerably in the stability of excavations and limits the
deformation to a great extent. Box pushing is an effective
method of constructing underpasses without disturbing the
traffic above. The soil nailed retaining wall occupies
much lesser space than ordinary retaining walls and also it
is cost effective and less time consuming from
construction point of view. The techniques can be adopted
effectively depending on the site conditions.

Pathway
Carriageway

Carriageway

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Fig. (3) Typical element section

Figure 3 shows the typical section of underpass and box
element pushing / jacking. The RCC element of length 6m
is pushed using high power hydraulic jacks of four
numbers located at the wall and base slab junctions. These
jacks are of capacity of 5000 kN (500 tons) each. Header
beam and reaction beams are cast at the top and bottom of
the RCC element. Further reinforcing the soil above the
RCC element and a pushing gap of 0.20 m was left for
scooping. Nailing has been carried-out in the section
ahead of pushing to avoid soil collapse. Generation of
lateral stresses during jacking, affects the capacity of jack
if frictional force is more. Hence, geogrid is placed
between element and soil to reduce the frictional force.
This geogrid was attached to front part of element using
mild steel pipes and plates. A canopy was made to avoid
loose soil to fall from top. The project was completed in a
span of about 150 days successfully and is being used.

The authors thank Indian Institute of Science and SID,

Bangalore; National Highway Authority of India, New
Delhi; Ministry of Defence, New Delhi; BBR
Constructions, Bangalore.
REFERENCES
Cala, M., and J. Flisiak. Slope Stability Analysis with
FLAC and Limit Equilibrium Methods, in FLAC and
Numerical
Modeling
in
Geomechanics2001
(Proceedings of the 2nd International FLAC Symposium
on Numerical Modeling in Geomechanics, Ecully-Lyon,
France, October 2001) D. Billaux, X. Rachez, C.
Detournay and R. Hart, Eds., Rotterdam: A. A.
Balkema, 2001. pp. 113-114.
Dawson, E. M., and W. H. Roth. Slope Stability Analysis
with FLAC, in FLAC and Numerical Modeling in
Geomechanics (Proceedings of the International FLAC
Symposium on Numerical Modeling in Geomechanics,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 1999),. Detournay
and R. Hart, Eds. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1999. pp.
3-9.
FLAC 4.0. 2000. Reference Manual, Itasca Consulting
Group Inc. Minneapolis
Matsui, T. and San, K-C. (1992) Finite element slope
stability analysis by shear strength reduction technique,
Soils and Foundations, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 59-70.
Sivakumar Babu, G. L., Srinivasa Murthy, B.R. and
Srinivas, A. (2002) Analysis of construction factors
influencing the behavior of soil-nailed earth retaining
walls, Ground Improvement, Vol. 6, No.3, pp. 137-143.

Fig. 4 Jacking of element

4. CONCLUSION
The construction of underpasses using soil nailing and box
jacking technologies presented as a case study are very
useful in infrastructure development. The numerical

Srinivasa Murthy, B.R., Sivakumar Babu, G. L. and

Srinivas, A. (2002) Analysis of prototype soil-nailed
retaining wall, Ground Improvement, Vol. 6, No.3, pp.
129-136.

762