Stability factors of cantilever sheet pile walls in clays by using finite element method

Suraparb Keawsawasvong1, Van Qui Lai2,3*, Quoc Thien Huynh4, and Chung Nguyen Van5
1
Department of Civil Engineering, Thammasat School of Engineering, Thammasat University, Pathumthani
12120, Thailand
2
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), 268 Ly Thuong Kiet
Street, District 10, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
3
Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, Linh Trung Ward, Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
4
Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, Danang 550000, Vietnam
5
Faculty of Civil Engineering, HCMC University of Technology and Education, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
*
lvqui@hcmut.edu.vn

Abstract. This paper presents a parametric study of the stability of cantilever sheet pile walls in
clays by using the plane strain finite element analysis. In the finite element analysis, the cantilever
sheet pile wall is modeled by using plate elements while the clay is modeled by using volume
elements and obeys the Tresca failure criterion. The cantilever sheet pile wall has the excavated
height and the embedded length. The clay has the unit weight and the undrained shear strength. By
using the strength reduction method, the safety factor of the cantilever sheet pile wall at the limit
state can be obtained. The results presented in the paper are illustrated in the form of design charts
of dimensionless parameters, which are the relationships between the stability factor and the wall
embedded length ratio. The proposed design charts of the stability factors can be employed to
preliminarily estimate the embedment of the cantilever sheet pile walls that are widely constructed
in practice.

Keywords: Sheet Pile, Excavation, Stability, Plane Strain, Finite Element Method

1 First Section

Retaining walls are the structures that are commonly used to retain lateral earth pressure induced by soil
movements. The cantilever sheet pile wall is one of the retaining wall systems that can be employed during
underground constructions to maintain the stability of soils. Designs of sheet pile walls are very important in order
to ensure an adequate safety factor. In general, the analyses of sheet pile walls in clays have been often based on
the classical limit equilibrium method (LEM) by assuming that there are the equilibrium forces between active and
passive lateral earth pressures on both sides of a cantilever sheet pile wall. This technique has been generally
known as Rankine’s method [1]. However, in Rankine’s method, the effect of soil heave is not properly taken into
account. The finite element method (FEM) is the method that better than the LEM since the FEM considers both
effects from the soil heave and the equilibrium of the lateral earth pressures. In this study, the plane strain FEM is
employed to determine the stability of cantilever sheet pile walls in clays. It is noted that, the deep excavation
problems were general studied by FEM [2,3,4.5]
The sheet pile wall has the excavated height (H) and the embedded length (D) as shown in Fig. 1. In
general, the stability solutions of retaining walls in geotechnical engineering are presented in the form of the
stability factor denoted by γH/su, where γ is soil unit weight, and su is the undrained shear strength of clay. Some
classical solutions of the stability factors for excavation works with supporting structures were proposed by
Terzaghi [6], Bjerrum, and Eide [7], and O’Rourke [8]. For an unsupported vertical open cut without supporting

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2 V. H. Luong et al.

structures, Martin [9] employed the lower bound and upper bound limit analyses to determine a very accurate
bound solution of this problem as N = 3.77 in which this value can be considered as the exact solution of an
unsupported vertical open cut in clay. For more complex problems of cantilever retaining walls in clays, Teeravong
[6] also carried out some FEM results of cantilever retaining walls. However, the existing solutions by Teeravong
[6] do not cover all possible ranges of the ratios between the embedded length and the excavated height (or D/H).
The paper presents the stability factors of cantilever sheet pile walls in clays by considering the complete range of
D/H varying from 0 to 10.

Fig. 1. The geometry of a cantilever sheet pile wall by using Plaxis2D.

2 Problem Formulation and Use of FEM

In this paper, the two-dimensional plane strain finite element software, namely Plaxis2D [11], is employed to
analyze the undrained stability of cantilever sheet pile walls in clays in which the range of D/H is in between 0 to
10. Fig. 1 shows the model of a cantilever sheet pile wall in Plaxis 2D. A cantilever sheet pile wall has a non-
dimensional thickness and is modeled by plate elements. Note that the cantilever wall has no bracing system. The
material model of clay is the Tresca material with the associated flow rule. The clay has the undrained strength
(su) and the unit weight (γ). In the FEM, the undrained Young's modulus Eu is defined as Eu/su = 300 and the
undrained Poisson's ratio is 0.495. The material properties of sheet pile walls correspond to the sheet pile types
IV. It should be noted that the thickness of the wall does not have any influence on the stability of cantilever walls
since Young's modulus of the wall is set to be very high corresponding to the properties of steel [10]. As a result,
the properties of the wall can be considered to be very rigid comparing to the properties of soil. The interface
elements are employed to model the interaction planes between the sheet pile wall and the clay (at both sides
around the wall). The roughness of the interface elements for all simulations is set to be 0.667, which is a typical
value for soil-structure interface [10]. The boundary displacement conditions on both left and right sides of the
domains are zero movements in the horizontal direction (ux = 0) while the vertical movements are set to be free
(uy ≠ 0). At the bottom plane of the domain, both horizontal and vertical displacements are enforced to zero (ux =
uy = 0) corresponding to have no movement. At the top ground surface and the plane at the excavated side, the
boundary displacement conditions are set to be free, which can be moved in both vertical and horizontal directions
(ux ≠ 0, uy ≠ 0). The sizes of the domains are chosen to be sufficiently large, where the plastic yielding zones are
not allowed to intersect the right, left, and bottom boundaries of the domains. The selected sizes of the domains
are explicitly shown in Fig. 1, which are applied to all simulations of cantilever sheet pile walls in this study.
In Plaxis2D, the clay is discretized by 15 nodded triangular elements while the plate element and soil-
structure interface element consist of 10 nodes. In order to ensure that the number of meshes used in this study is
sufficient, several trials and errors of mesh generations of the problem of the cantilever sheet pile wall with D/H
= 2 are carried out. By plotting the stability factors of this problem with various numbers of meshes automatically
generated by the software, it can be found from Fig. 2(a) that the sufficient number of meshes can be successfully
obtained when the number of meshes converges to approximately 7,800 elements. Thus, the meshes of all FEM
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models in this study are strictly controlled to be not less than 7,800 elements. An example of mesh generation
(about 7,800 elements) is shown in Fig. 2(b). The failure analyses of cantilever sheet pile walls are performed by
using the strength reduction method in Plaxis2D. By using this reduction method, the value of safety factor (FS)
can be achieved when the FS value converges to a constant value which is generally considered to be the final
result of the strength reduction method. Note that the input dimensional parameters in this study are H, D, γ, su,
and the output parameter is FS. By using the technique of dimensionless analysis [12], the dimensionless
parameters in this study involve one dimensionless input parameter, which is the embedment ratio D/H, and one
output dimensionless parameter, which is the stability factor FSγH/su.

4.88

4.87
FSγH/su

4.86

4.85

4.84

4.83
0 3,000 6,000 9,000 12,000 15,000
Number of mesh
(a) (b)

Fig. 2. (a) Stability factors with various numbers of mesh; (a) an example of mesh generation (about 7,800
elements).

5.2

4.8
FSγH/su

4.4
Present Study
4.0 Teeravong (2015)

Martin (2011)
3.6
0 2 4 6 8 10
D/H
Fig. 3. The relationship between FSγH/su and D/H.

3 Results and Discussions

Fig. 4 show the relationship between FSγH/su and D/H. The stability factors of the cantilever sheet pile wall
obtained from FEM are in the range of FSγH/su = 3.8 to 5.0 for D/H = 0 to 10. In the case of D/H = 0 (or an
unsupported vertical open cut), the FEM solution, which is FSγH/su = 3.77, is exactly equal to the exact solution
reported by Martin [9]. Note that if the stability factor FSγH/su from any excavation projects is less than 3.77, any
retaining wall system may not be requested since the unsupported vertical open cut can be sufficiently used during
construction sequences. In addition, the results presented in this study is in good agreement with the existing
solutions reported by Teeravong [10] for the range of D/H = 0.5 to 2. This indicates that the finite element models
4 V. H. Luong et al.

in this study are correctly performed. From Fig.3, it is found that when D/H is more than 4, the stability factor
seems to approximately converge to FSγH/su = 5.0. It can be implied that an increase of D/H > 4 has a very small
effect on an increase of FSγH/su. Any increment of the embedded depth of the wall may not further strengthen the
stability of the sheet pile wall. Other types of walls (e.g., piled wall or diaphragm wall) or the bracing systems are
necessarily required in the excavation works that need more values of FSγH/su > 5.0. The proposed design charts
in Fig. 3 can be used to preliminarily predict the stability factor or the excavated depth of the cantilever sheet pile
walls in practice.

D/H = 2 D/H = 10

Fig. 4. Comparisons of deformed meshes between two cases of D/H.

D/H = 0.5 D/H = 1

D/H = 2 D/H = 3

D/H = 5 D/H = 10

Fig. 5. Comparisons of incremental shear strains for different ratios of D/H.

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The predicted failure mechanisms including the deformed meshes and the incremental shear strains are
shown in Figs. 4 and 5, respectively. For the deformed meshes, two cases including D/H = 2 and 10 are selected
to demonstrate the collapse modes of the cantilever sheet pile walls. It can be clearly seen from Fig. 4 that, in the
case of small D/H, the cantilever sheet pile wall is plunged and translated horizontally into the excavated side,
where the rotational mechanism of the wall can be clearly observed. For the case of very high D/H, the wall is
only translated horizontally without the rotational mechanism since the wall system is mainly failed from the effect
of soil heave. From this incident, the limitation of using a cantilever sheet pile wall is FSγH/su = 5 since there is
no benefit on increasing the embedded depth D/H more than 4. The other systems such as the diaphragm wall or
piled wall with bracing systems may be employed instead of using the cantilever sheet pile wall when dealing with
the cases of D/H > 4.
The incremental shear strains can reveal the failure slip lines as shown in Fig. 5. The comparison of
incremental shear strains is demonstrated in Fig. 5 for different ratios of D/H. Generally, the shapes of the failure
slip lines are quite similar to the classical circular-arc failures encountered in slope stability problems. It can be
seen from all cases shown in Fig. 5 that the failure slip lines begin from the tip of the wall and extend to the
excavated side and the ground surface. An increase of D/H significantly results in an increase in the sizes of the
failure slip lines. The predicted failure mechanism presented in this study can be used to predict the scales of the
failures when the sheet pile wall system collapses.

4 Conclusions

The stability factors of cantilever sheet pile walls in clays are numerically derived by using the plane strain finite
element analysis. In this study, the strength reduction method in Plaxis2D is employed to obtain the safety factor
of the cantilever sheet pile wall at the limit state. The results are presented in the form of dimensionless parameters,
which is the relationship between the stability factor FSγH/su and the embedment ratio D/H. The effects of the
embedment ratio on failure mechanisms of cantilever sheet pile walls in clays are also demonstrated in the paper.

Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the Faculty of Engineering Research Fund, Thammasat University. We would like
to thank Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), VNU-HCM for the support of time and facilities
for this study.

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