• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.427-443
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• 2023

Across the globe, rapid urbanization demands the construction of basements for car parking and sub way station within the vicinity of high-rise buildings supported on piled raft foundations. As a consequence, ground movements caused by such excavations could interfere with the serviceability of the building and the piled raft as well. Hence, the prediction of the building responses to the adjacent excavations is of utmost importance. This study used three-dimensional numerical modelling to capture the effects of twin excavations (final depth of each excavation, H_e=24 m) on a 20-storey building resting on (4×4) piled raft. Because the considered structure, pile foundation, and soil deposit are three-dimensional in nature, the adopted three-dimensional numerical modelling can provide a more realistic simulation to capture responses of the system. The hypoplastic constitutive model was used to capture soil behaviour. The concrete damaged plasticity (CDP) model was used to capture the cracking behaviour in the concrete beams, columns and piles. The computed results revealed that the first excavation- induced substantial differential settlement (i.e., tilting) in the adjacent high-rise building while second excavation caused the building tilt back with smaller rate. As a result, the building remains tilted towards the first excavation with final value of tilting of 0.28%. Consequently, the most severe tensile cracking damage at the bottom of two middle columns. At the end of twin excavations, the building load resisted by the raft reduced to half of that the load before the excavations. The reduced load transferred to the piles resulting in increment of the axial load along the entire length of piles.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.25-40
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• 2022

In this study, 3D coupled-consolidation numerical parametric study was conducted to predict the deformation mechanism of a 20 storey building sitting on (4×4) piled raft (with length of piles, L_p=30 m) to adjacent 6 m diameter (D) tunnelling in stiff clay. The influences of different tunnel locations relative to piles (i.e., z_t/L_p) were investigated in this parametric study. In first case, the tunnel was excavated near the pile shafts with depth of tunnel axis (z_t) of 9 m (i.e., z_t/L_p). In second and third cases, tunnels were driven at z_t of 30 m and 42 m (i.e., z_t/L_p = 1.0 and 1.4), respectively. An advanced hypoplastic clay model (which is capable of taking small-strain stiffness in account) was adopted to capture soil behaviour. The computed results revealed that tunnelling activity adjacent to a building resting on piled raft caused significant settlement, differential settlement, lateral deflection, angular distortion in the building. In addition, substantial bending moment, shear forces and changes in axial load distribution along pile length were induced. The findings from the parametric study revealed that the building and pile responses significantly influenced by tunnel location relative to pile.