soil nail walls

Numerical analysis approach

Faculty Prepared by
Dr.Hashemolhoseini Autumn 2017 Mohammad ziaee
 Earth-Retaining Structures or

Methods 
Braced wall using wale struts Truss
 Soldier beam & lagging  Anchorage
 Sheet-pile walls  Tie-back
 Bored pile walls  Soil nailing
 Diaphragm walls-slurry walls  Hollow bar soil
 Retaining walls nailing
Searching for one of the most
practical ,useful and important Soil nailing walls
methods in last few years

Looking for a better numerical

analysis

Looking for a more money

and time saving design with
better results
 en
n t
Introducing the America’s reference manual for
co ts soil Nail walls

Checking out various aspects of numerical

analyze on the method

softwares

A glance on some researches

conclusions
 America’s reference
manual for soil nail walls
 U.S. Department of
transportation
 Federal highway administration
 7th edition 2015

 Framework for design of soil nail

walls using ASD method while
integrating LRFD principles
Historical origins of soil nail
walls
New Austrian Tunneling Method(1960)
France(1972)
Germany(1975)

What are the soil nails?

Soil nails are reinforcing,passive elements that
are drilled and grouted to support excavations in
soil, or in soft and weathered rock .

What are the main resisting mechanisms?

Tensile resistance of the soil nails tendon and the
pull-out resistance of the soil nail.
Elements of a soil nail wall:

1-Soil nails:
 Tendons
 Grout
 Corrosion protection

2-facing : Shotcrete

3-connection components

4-drainage system
Construction materials and methods
Drilling machine
The diameter of drill holes: 10-20 cm
Tendons : Threaded solid steel bars
PVC centralizers
Corrosion protection : epoxy coating
Drainage system
Soil nail inclination: 10-20 degrees usually 15
Preliminary soil nail length : 0.7H
Applications of soil nail walls:

 Roadway projects

 Bridge construction projects

 Tunneling projects
 advantages
1-constrauction
 Less disruptive to traffic and cause less environmental
impact
 Fast installation
 Existing a relatively large number of qualified contractors
 Existing a widespread knowledge amonge engineers

2-performance
 Relatively flexible
 Well performing during seismic events

3-cost
 Most economical in most cases compared to other systems
 Limitations

 Not well-suited where large amounts of

groundwater seep in to the excavation

 Permanent soil nail walls require permanent

underground easements.
Lack of good reference or code for
design and construction

Lack of appropriate supervision and

monitoring on earth-retaining projects
What are the most interesting and attractive
numerical approaches about soil nail walls?

 2D and 3D static analysis

 2D and 3D dynamic analysis
 Numerical analysis using a brand new soil constitutive model
 Evaluating the effect of geometric properties of soil nails such
as length,inclination angle, and the hole arrangement
 Defining a new optimized arrangement of soil nail
 Numerical analysis using finite difference method
 Numerical analysis using finite element method
 Numerical Evaluating the geometry of soil nail wall
 Analysis of pull-out of soil nail under static and dynamic
conditions
 Comparison of soil nail wall with other retaining methods
 Applying new innovative analysis methods such as pseudo-
static and pseudo-dynamic analysis
 What are the most famous and frequently
used numerical softwares in this method?

Fast PLAXIS
Lagrangian FLAC2D
Analysis of FLAC3D
Continua GEOSLOPE
SNAP
SNAIL
SNAILZ
ABAQUS
XSTABL
SLIDE
GOLDNAIL
ADINA
 researches
Dr.Hashemolhoseini,Mahmoud Ghazavi(2004)
 A kinematical pseudo-dynamic analysis
 Seismic loading
 Evaluating local stability
 researches
Sheikh Bahaee,Dr. Hashemolhoseini,Dr. Koosha,Dr. Halabian
(2008)

 flack3D
 static analysis using mohr-coulomb
 dynamic analysis using hysteresis model
 Study Some features such as, soil nail inclination,nail length,soil
strength properties

Result :
 Numerical analysis indicated that satisfactory consistency with
measurements of full experimental wall(france).

 Changing Nail inclination maintain to improve wall

performance but until some specific extent.
 researches
Sengupta (2011)
 An analytical method based on the kinematic limit approach
for stability analysis.
 2 kinds of failure surfaces :a planar failure surface and a
circular failure surface

Result:
 Factor of safety and nail forces obtained by the proposed
method were in good agreement with published results.
 researches
Ramli Nazir(2013)
 Finite element VS finite difference
 Factor of safety
 Horizontal displacement of soil wall
 researches
Masoud Hajialilue(2016)

 flac3D-finite difference method

 Limit states:1-applying a uniform pressure on the top of the
wall 2- reducing the shear strength of the soil
 Comparing factor of safety with limit equilibrium method
 Assessment of inclination angle of soil nails

Results:

 For cohesion soil : slip surface is in good agreement with

circular shapes
 Factor of safety is smaller than those found by the limit
equilibrium method
 researches
Nouruzi and Dr.Hashemolhoseini(2017)

 Flac3D-explicit finite difference method

 Static analysis
 Using a unified two surface constitutive
model(maleki)
 Using long nail row in soil nail with 15 ,21 and 25
meter high For defining an optimized arrangement
of soil nails.

Result:
 using long nail row in near the middle of the wall’s
height giving the best result.
 Better performance for the brand new model in
comparison with mohr-coulomb and cam-clay
 researches

Nouruzi and Dr.Hashemolhoseini

Factor of Safety : 1.2
 conclusions
 Limit states have not the ability to accurately analyze the
movement and the nail’s stress so we can use the numerical
methods.

 The kind of Soil model and it’s properties can extremely

influence the analysis results.

 Two major advantages of numerical methods:

1. The possibility for well considering the interaction between soil
and nails.
2. The possibility to consider various soil constitutive models.

 There is a Lack of enough appropriate 3D dynamic analyzes.

Searching for one of the most
practical ,useful and important Soil nailing walls
methods in last few years
FLAC3d maleki
The unified two-surface model
Looking for better numerical
analysis Boundary surface model

Static and dynamic analyze

Looking for more money and
An optimized arrangement of
time saving design with better
soil nails in some special cases
results
Thank you for your
attention