See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/282337442

Analysis of soldier pile wall with jet-grouting as retaining system for deep
excavation

Conference Paper · September 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1421.8722

CITATIONS READS

0 1,487

3 authors, including:

Josif Josifovski Bojan Susinov

Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje
59 PUBLICATIONS   123 CITATIONS    25 PUBLICATIONS   14 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

COST Action TU1202 – Impact of climate change on engineered slopes for infrastructure View project

GEOLAB - LIWEMAT - deformation characterisation of LIghtWEight foundation MATerials View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Josif Josifovski on 01 October 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Proceedings of the XVI ECSMGE
Geotechnical Engineering for Infrastructure and Development
ISBN 978-0-7277-6067-8

© The authors and ICE Publishing: All rights reserved, 2015

doi:10.1680/ecsmge.60678

Analysis of soldier pile wall with jet-grouting as

retaining system for deep excavation
Аnalyse de mur de soutènement avec „jet-grouting” comme système
de retenue pour excavation profonde
J. Josifovski*1, B. Susinov1 and I. Markov2
1
“Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University, Faculty of Civil Engineering - Skopje, Republic of Macedonia
2
BETON Construction Company A.D., Skopje, Republic of Macedonia
*Corresponding Author
ABSTRACT This paper presents an analysis and execution measures for protection of deep excavation pit in the city centre of Skopje of
administrative building with three underground floors. The 1155 m2 pit borders with two frequent streets, adjacent an existing high-rise
building and another construction site. The foundation depth is -12.6 m, around 3.5 m under the ground water level, thus the technical so-
lution should offer adequate hydraulic and equilibrium stability of the excavation pit. A detailed site investigation had detected sandy
gravel until -32 m which continues as well compacted marl. Together a combination between soldier pile retaining wall with anchors and
jet-grouting elements has been employed to form a hydraulic barrier, seal completely the pit from direct inflow of ground water into the pit.
Moreover the jet-grouting will have certain effects on stability through the soil improvement of the local material. A double fluid jet-
grouting has been chosen as most effective because a larger eroding diameter was needed. The calculation has been performed u sing
the finite element method while the jet-grouting parameters were defined according EN 12716 and later confirmed with trail investiga-
tions. In a period of 2 months 1344 jet-grouting columns with total length of 4893 m had been successfully executed followed by con-
struction of the underground structure.

RÉSUMÉ Cet article présente une analyse et d'exécution les mesures de protection du fouille en profondeur dans le centre de la ville de
Skopje de bâtiment administratif de trois étages souterrains. Les frontières de 1155 m2 avec fosse de deux rues adjacentes fréquentes, un
bâtiment de grande hauteur existant et un autre chantier. La profondeur des fondations est -12.6 m autour de 3.5 m sous le niveau de la
nappe phréatique, donc la solution technique devrait offrir la stabilité et l'équilibre hydraulique adéquate de la fouille. Une enquête détaillée
du site a détecté gravier sableux jusqu'à -32 m qui continue ainsi marnes compactées. Ensemble Une combinaison entre le mur de soutène-
ment de la pile de soudure avec des ancres et des éléments „jet-grouting” doit former une barrière hydraulique, sceller complètement le
puits de flux direct de l'eau du sol dans la fosse. En outre, le „jet-grouting” aura certains effets sur la stabilité à travers l'amélioration du sol
de la matière locale. Un jet de fluide à double-injection a été choisi comme la plus efficace, car un diamètre d'érosion plus grande était né-
cessaire. Le calcul a été effectué en utilisant la méthode des éléments finis, tandis que les paramètres „jet-grouting” ont été définies selon la
norme EN 12716 et plus tard confirmées par les enquêtes de sentiers. Dans un délai de 2 mois 1344 colonnes de „jet-grouting” avec une
longueur totale de 4893 m avait été exécutée, à la réussite suivie par la construction de la structure souterraine.

1 INTRODUCTION

The location of the new public administration build-
ing in the Skopje city centre is not far away from the
main square on the corner of the Macedonia and
Dame Gruev Street (Figure 1). The building should
have 3 underground floors for parking and 8 floors
above the terrain for offices.
The protection of 52.35 x 22.8 m excavation pit or
area of 1155 m2 with depth of -12.6 m, 3.5 m under
the ground water level is a formidable engineering
task. Especially when from all four sides the site is
surrounded by existing structures or streets which
cannot be closed for the execution period. Beside ad-
jacent streets (up and left on Figure 1) to the site, on
the right side there is block of flats on six floors. On
distance of around 10 m from the bottom, there is a
high-rise building with 16 floors. The protection of
the excavation pit beside the ground stability had to

3953
Geotechnical Engineering for Infrastructure and Development
ensure hydraulic stability and dry conditions for con-
struction.
Figure 1. Site location as aerial view.
2 GROUND CONDITIONS
The geological conditions were defined by field in-
vestigation, such as boreholes reaching depth up to
40 m. The profile is homogeneous up to 32 m of
depth classified as sandy gravel material (SFc) after
which a well compacted marl (M) appears. The max-
imum diameter of the particle reaches up to 40 mm,
but on some location at different depths layers of
compacted sand had been registered. The ground wa-
ter level was detected at -9.7 m from the surface.
Other test such as SPT has been performed at differ-
ent depths to correlate the compressibility modulus
and angle of internal friction of the material. Addi-
tionally, laboratory tests had been perform to obtain
the relevant material properties presented in Table 1.
3 TECHNICAL SOLUTION FOR PROTECTION
OF THE EXCAVATION PIT
Due to the build-up of Skopje city site surrounding
with many neighboring buildings and other infra-
structure, the criteria for allowed deformation or soil
mass movement was very strict (conservative) not al-
lowing displacement greater than 15 mm. Therefore,
3954
a solution with stiff anchored pile retaining wall has
been primarily considered. At some stage beside this
one also other possibilities were analyzed such as di-
aphragm wall. The design concept considers addi-
tional jet-grouting columns (soilcrete elements) add-
ed as curtain and carpet sealing the site from ground
water inflow. They also introduce improvement ef-
fects on the local soil material.
The pile retaining wall is constructed of 101 piles
with diameter of 80 cm spaced at 140 cm is discon-
tinuous soldier pile barrier sealed with additional ver-
tical soilcrete elements in between (Figure 2). To sta-
bilize the wall, anchors were added at level -3 m at
every opening in between the reinforced concrete
piles. Together with the horizontal barrier (carpet)
the pit is going to be complete secured from ground
water infiltration from side and bottom.
Figure 2. Excavation pit with pile retaining wall.
The piles start from the street level at 0.0 m and go
up to 14.5m in the depth. Next to them the first row
of soilcrete columns is inclined by 11 degrees start-
ing from level -8.5 m with height of 6.85 m. The sec-
ond row starts a bit lower from level -10.5 m and is
inclined by 6 degrees reaching depth up to 14.5 m.
The first row has 108 and second row of the curtain
111 elements (Figure 3).
The horizontal barrier (carpet) is also constructed
by soilcrete elements grouted in a patter spaced on
87 x 110 cm on area around 970 m2. The total num-
ber is 1198 with the height of 3 m. For total sealing
of the excavation pit of 1155 m2, a 1344 soilcrete el-
ements with total grouting length of 4893 m’ are
used. The drilling length is larger for additional
2554 m or 7447 m in total.
 Josifovski, Susinov and Markov

step, stability or deformation analysis, were precisely

defined.

(а)

(а)

(b)
Figure 3. Excavation pit (a) Base plan and (b) Cross section 2-2.

4 JET-GROUTING PROCEDURE

A two-phase jet-grouting procedure was adopted af-

ter trial pitting. They were used to establish optimal (b)
recapture for the injection mass and determine the
Figure 4. Field investigations and laboratory tests (a) visual in-
minimal eroding diameter. An injection mass with spection and (b) soilcrete specimens.
water / cement ratio was injected with water for bet-
ter mixing with the local material and larger diameter
soilcrete columns. The injection pressure was set to
5 STABILITY ANALYSIS
400MPa which forces the mass through two nozzles
of 1.8 mm diameter at speeds of around 100km/h.
The global stability of the soil masses in the excava-
Different water cement ratio and rotation speeds as
tion pit together with the protection measurements
well as monitor lifting speeds were considered. In to-
has been calculated on finite element model. This
tal 9 test piles were executed and investigated. After
way the stress-strain behavior of the different materi-
7 days some of the grouted bodies were excavated,
als and structures could be checked and the forces
under the GWL (Figure 4a) and specimens for labor-
and deformation could be determined. For this pur-
atory testing were taken (Figure 4b).
pose the PLAXIS program as a well established and
The uniaxial compression strength (UCS) as well
specialized for geotechnical problems was used.
as the tension strength from Brasilian test of the soil-
Thus, the problem was calculated using two-
crete material was determined on representative sam-
dimensional plane strain analysis where the soil ma-
ples. The material parameters necessary for the next

3955
Geotechnical Engineering for Infrastructure and Development
terial was modeled using the МC and HS model in
contrast to the linear elastic model for the concrete
material. The material properties of the soil and soil-
crete material are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Material properties.
Material SFc Soilcrete
Unsat. unit weight un(kN/m3) 21,5 22,0
Sat. unit weight un(kN/m3) 22 22
Cohesion c (kPa) 2 658
Angle of internal friction  35 37
Young’s modulus E50 (MPa) 40 8.000
Poisons ratio  0,3 0,2
Permeability k (m/s) 10-4 10-8
A special attention has been put to definition of the
soilcrete material according to the results from the
laboratory tests. The characteristic UCS after 28 days
was adopted conservatively as 8 MPa although there
were others ranging up to 17 MPa. The Hoek-Brown
material model has been used for transformation to
MC model according the measured parameters. For
the deformation parameters the recommendation
from the literature were followed defining the Hooks
modulus as Е = 1000*UCS (MPa), but again the tests
gave much greater value. The analysis had been per-
formed for static loads without seismic acceleration
because the protection of the pit has temporal charac-
ter. To be able to simulate the execution of the pro-
tection in different phases, a stage construction ap-
proach in calculation has been employed, in four
consecutive phases:
1. Partially excavated pit with soldier pile wall
with anchors (-8.5 m depth);
2. Execution of jet-grouting elements;
3. Complete excavation of the pit (-12.5 m
depth);
4. FOS (φ- c reduction) procedure.
In this paper only the results from phase no. 3 will
be presented and discussed in details. The modeling
process begins with definition of the geometry as
well as others, such as: anchors, load, soilcrete and
soil material as depicted in Figure 5(a). The anchor
capacity is 250 kN/m’ calculated according to the
provisions from EN1997-1. As such it was modeled
with inclination of 15 degrees, bond length of 7 m
and total length of 12 m. The pile wall is discretized
as equivalent diaphragm taking in consideration the
3956
variations in the stiffness and dimensions. On dis-
tance of 1.25 m from the wall, a uniform surface load
q=33.33 kPa is assumed as design traffic load.
The total displacements on the top are smaller than
6 mm while at the toe of the wall it is between
10 mm and 12 mm, see Figure 5(b). The maximum
deformation of 28 mm in upward direction is in the
middle of the pit. It is a result of the water pressure
but more as an effect of the unloading (3 m of exca-
vation) which realistically may not occur. In Figure
5c the vertical distribution of the total pressure is pre-
sented where the maximum registered acting on the
wall is 196 kPa and 50-120 kPa in the zone from the
wall to centre of the pit. To certain amount the total
pressure is influenced by the active pore pressure un-
der the GWL (Figure 6а).
The pore pressure is linearly distributed starting
from zero at -8.5 m finishing with 55 kPa at the toe
of the wall. Another very important indicator which
limits the bearing capacity and stability of the soil is
the potential for developing plastic and tension points
(Figure 6b). The sliding mechanism is depicted by
the red plastic zone in the toe and in combination
with tension zone in the middle of the pit. Although
the plastic zone is formed, the total resisting capacity
at the toe is still not reached. This fact is confirmed
with the diagram of wall displacement depicted in
Figure 6(c) and FOS calculation. Hence, displace-
ments are described with rotating mechanism with a
centre positioned relatively low (in the lower third of
the wall) resulting in 10 mm toe deformation which
is result of the anchor. The rotation angle of the wall
is 1/475 which below allowed value of 1/500. The
global stability of the system is confirmed through so
called /c reduction procedure resulting with a global
FOS =1.64 far larger than the 1.1 allowed for tempo-
rary structures.
All design measures for protection of the excava-
tion pit had been executed as planned, but the antici-
pated deformation had not occurred at least not in
such extent. For the whole process the site was in-
strumented registering the deformations on the wall
and outside. Finally, the excavation in the pit had fin-
ished in March 2014 after two months of work when
the construction of the structure started (Figure 7).
 Josifovski, Susinov and Markov

5
3 4
2

(а) (a)

(b)

(b)

(c)
Figure 5. (a) Discretization of elements and materials, (b) Total
displacements |u| from the excavation phase and (c) Vertical
stresses yy from the excavation phase.
(c)
Figure 6. (a) Active pore pressure pactive from the excavation
phase, (b) Plastic and tension points from the excavation phase and
(c) total displacement |u| of the retaining construction from the ex-
cavation phase.

3957
 Geotechnical Engineering for Infrastructure and Development
Figure 7. Finished protection of the excavation pit status from
March 2014.
6 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper an analysis for protection of deep exca-
vation pit in the city Centre of Skopje has been pre-
sented. A set of different measures had been used to
secure the 1155 m2 pit with depth of 12.6 m exactly
3.5 m under the GWL. The task becomes even more
difficult because of the fact that the site borders with
two very frequent streets, adjacent an existing high-
rise building and another construction site. The pre-
sented solution had been able to provide an ade-
quate hydraulic and equilibrium stability of the ex-
cavation pit without unexpected situation during the
construction period.
This solution has been chosen because it has
several advantages over other, such as: complete wa-
ter sealing, ground improvement etc.
This experience has been most positive creating
perfect water barrier without any infiltration of water.
The registered displacement of the wall was smaller
than 2 mm, thus all the nearby infrastructure and
buildings were safe at all stages of construction. This
method has proved exceptionally advantageous in
comparison to others for sandy gravel soil dominant
in the greater region of Skopje. Beside the technical
aspects also the economic ones were in favor over
some classical solution of diaphragm wall in combi-
nation with deep exfiltration wells.
The numerical modeling is powerful tool with
many advantages over the analytical solutions ena-
3958
View publication stats
bling designers to have optimal solutions, especially
when effects of material combinations with largely
differing properties and soil-structure interaction are
considered. The two-dimensional finite element
model of the whole excavation process has been able
realistically to simulate soil-structure interaction be-
havior, but slightly better results are expected if
three-dimensional model has been used especially at
the corners of the pit.
Finally, it can be concluded that even for larger
sites the combination of soilcrete elements and sol-
dier piles are successful in protection of deeper exca-
vation pits in build-up areas such as the city centre of
the Macedonian capital Skopje.
REFERENCES
EN 1997-1:2012 Eurocode 7: Geotechnical design – Part 1: Gen-
eral rules.
EN 12716:2010 Execution of special geotechnical works – Jet
grouting.
Verlag fur Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH &
Co. KG. 2003. Recommendations on Excavations. German Society
for Geotechnics (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Geotechnike.V.), Ernst
& Sohn, Berlin, ISBN 3-433-01712-3.
Josifovski J. & Gjorgjevski S. 2013. Comparative Study of Differ-
ent Deep Excavation Retaining Systems. Proceedings,18th
ICSMGE- International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Ge-
otechnical Engineering, Vol. 3, (Eds. P. Delage et al.), 2095-2098,
Presses des Ponts, Paris, France, ISBN 978-2-85978-476-8.
Josifovski J., Gjorgjevski S. & Jovanovski M. 2012. Numerical
Analysis of 20.5m Deep Excavation with Anchored Diaphragm
Wall. Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft
Ground (Ed. Giulia Viggiani), 835-843, CRC Press / Balkema,
Taylor & Francis Group, London UK, Print ISBN: 978-0-415-
68367-8.
Josifovski J., Gjorgjevski S. & Jovanovski M. 2011. Deep Excava-
tion With Multi-Anchored Diaphragm Wall. Proceedings of 15th
European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engi-
neering, Part 3, (Eds. A. Anagnostopoulos et al.), 1485-1490, IOS
Press, Athens, Greece, ISBN 978-1-60750-800-7.
Kempfert, H.G. & Gebreselassie, B. 2006. Excavations and Foun-
dations in Soft Soils. Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg, ISBN
540-32894-7.
Plaxis 2D AE. 2012. Scientific Manuel, Plaxis bv.
Potts, D.M. & Zdravkovic, L. 2001. Finite element analysis in
geotechnical engineering: application. Imperial College of Sci-
ence, Technology and Medicine, Thomas Telford Publishing,
Thomas Telford Ltd. ISBN 0-7277 2753-2.