Numerical Simulation of Diaphragm Wall-Pile-Soil Interaction

The construction of underground infrastructures often requires to excavate in close vicinity of existing structures. In these conditions, the main design requirement is that of limiting ground deformations caused by excavation to ensure the safety of the structure. The diaphragm wall was used to meet this requirement on the background of a hydropower station in China. In this paper, a series of 3D finite element analyses was carried out for modeling the installation of diaphragm walls based on ABAQUS. The contact pair between the wall, the pile and soil was built by the master-slave method. The elastic model is adopted for the diaphragm wall and the pile, the elastic-plastic model based Mohr-Coulomb was applied to soil. The construction process and the running state were also simulated to estimate whether the plan was appropriate while considering the initial ground stress. The results obtain by numerical simulation agree with the observed data, the deformation process can be satisfactorily modeled. So this simulation method of the diaphragm wall can be used as reference for similar hydraulic projects.