Finite Element Analysis of A Soil Nailed Slope-Some Recent Experience

Tan Siew Ann1, William Cheang2, Ooi Poh Hai2 and Derick Tan3
Centre for Soft-ground Engineering, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge Crescent, 119260, Singapore.
1 2 3

Associate Professor, Director of CSGE, cvetansa@nus.edu.sg Research Scholars, Undergraduate

ABSTRACT: This paper presents some recent experiences on the use of Finite Element Modeling in the back analysis of an instrumented soil nailed slope in Singapore. Geotechnical instrumentation consisted of sensors located within the reinforced mass and vibrating wire strain gages along selected soil nails. The mobilization of soil nail forces at various stages of excavation and the lateral displacement of the nailed slope due to stress-relief was monitored. Two dimensional finite element analyses were performed to replicate field behavior. It is known that the analysis of soil nailed structures is essentially a three dimensional (3D) problem which requires huge computational resources. In engineering practices, it is ideal to simplify complex 3D problems into two-dimension (2D) so that large parametric finite element analysis can be made reasonably well to verify and optimize soil nail design concepts. To do this, the simplification process has to be good and represent the insitu boundary conditions. In this paper, apart from assessing the legitimacy of 2-D Finite element analysis, it will be shown that higher order soil models and interface models should be used to capture adequately the real behavior of soil nailed slopes. The assessment of factor of safety based on FEM will be shown and are compared to conventional methods. 1. INTRODUCTION When properly engineered to satisfy construction requirements, soil nailing is an effective and low-energy intensive method for supporting deep excavations, stabilization and remediation of slopes. Very often, predictions of the deformation behavior of a soil-nailed structure through FEM are required to ensure that displacement limits set by the construction requirements are not exceeded. Finite element modeling of soil-nailed structure is essentially a three dimensional problem requiring large computational power and resources. The conversion of a 3-D problem to 2D is ideal and has many practical implications in routine engineering analysis and design. Slope stability analyses are conventionally assessed using Limit Equilibrium (LE) methods and lately the Finite Element (FE) method has been found to be suitable in performing stability calculations. Griffiths and Lane (1999) highlighted that the FE method provides a more powerful alternative to traditional LE methods in assessing stability in their study of unreinforced slopes and embankments. In this paper results are presented for a comparative study that has been made between the FE or LE method for reinforced slope stability. 2. BUKIT BATOK SOIL NAILED SLOPE AND GEO-INSTRUMENTATION Section 9 was chosen for this study as indicated in Figure 1. The geometry and the position of the soil nails are shown in Figure 2. The soil nails are 150mm in diameter having either a bar size of 40 and 50mm. The lengths of the soil nails are indicated in Figure 2. Vibrating wire strain gauges were located at a spacing of 2m along selected soil nails to measure the development of forces and bending moments. The recorded axial and shear forces at various stages of excavation is given in Figure 3. The recorded lateral displacement of section 9 is given in Figure 4.

3. FINITE ELEMENT BACK-ANALYSIS 3a. MESH DESIGN

Figure 5 illustrates the mesh model that was used in a typical Finite Element Analysis. The 15-node element triangular element type with 12 gaussian points suitable for stress and collapse calculation was used. However the used of such elements leads to relatively higher memory consumption. For Phi-c type of analysis in Plaxis Version 8 the 15-node elements is technically better for Factor-of-safety calculations. 3b. CONSTITUTIVE SOIL MODELLING

An advance double stiffness soil model known as Hardening Soil (HS) model was used in the analysis and the full explanation and derivation of this model can be obtain in Schanz (1999) and Brinkgreve (2000). The soil parameters adopted in the investigation was based on the available data derived from field investigation as well as from Rahardjo (2001). In contrast to an elastic perfectly-plastic model, the yield surface of the HS model is not fixed in principal stress space, but will expand due to plastic straining. When subjected to primary deviator loading, soil shows a decreasing stiffness and irreversible plastic strains develop. Kondner (1963) formulated hyperbolic equations to represent observed stress-strain relationships in the laboratory and later used in the well-known hyperbolic model by Duncan and Chang (1970). The HS Model is by far more superior than the hyperbolic model as the theory of plasticity was adopted rather then the theory of elasticity. Secondly, by including soil dilatancy and thirdly, by introducing a yield cap. Figure 6 and Table 1 illustrates the HS model. The simple Mohr-Coulomb was also used during the preparation of finite element test models. Table 2 showed the HS parameters obtained for the 3 soil layers used in the slope analysis. 3c. SOIL NAILING MODELLING

The smeared soil nail technique was used to transform the discrete nails into equivalent plates. Figure 7 illustrates briefly the concept of equivalent plate approach. The soil nail inclusions were modeled using beam elements with three degrees of freedom per node (ux uy z). When 15-node triangular continuum element are used, 5-node beam elements will be employed in the finite element code (Please see Figure 8). The beam elements are based on Mindlins beam theory. This theory allows for beam deflections due to shearing as well as bending and in addition, the element can change length when axial force is applied. 3d. INTERFACE ELEMENTS

The 10 node interface element is used to model the stick-slip interaction between soil and nail inclusion. Five Newton Cotes stress points are located between the node pairs. The stick-slip condition is govern by the Moh-Coulomb failure criteria and R interaction factor. The shearing strength and stiffness (Pullout strength and deformation) of interface elements were deduced from field pullout tests. Figure 9 illustrates the shear stiffness that was used in the analyses. 4. FINITE ELEMENT RESULTS Sensitivity runs were made to gauge the effect of soil strength parameters on the deformation of the slope and maximum tensile force of soil nails, however these results will not be presented here. The quality of prediction after post construction is presented in Figures 10 and 11. 4a. PREDICTION OF NAIL FORCES ALONG SOIL NAILS

The predicted axial force along soil nail 1 and 2 is given Figure 10 and are compared to the measured readings. The general trend of axial force mobilization along the soil nail is not precisely predicted but it is quite close to the measured behavior. The predicted maximum axial force for soil nail 1 is similar and the position of maximum tensile force is similar too. However for soil nail 2 the predicted trend is dissimilar. The predicted tensile force is less then the measured value and the predicted location of maximum tensile force is again dissimilar to the measured value.

4b.

PREDICTION OF LATERAL DISPLACEMENT

The trend of the lateral displacement was well predicted. Figure 11 compares the measured data with the predicted data for section 9. It can be seen that the numerical displacements matches quite closely with the general trend of the inclinometer readings. However most of the numerical runs predicted smaller maximum deflection at the top of the inclinometers. Detail wise, along the deflection, current 2-D analysis did not capture the changes in rotation due to the fact that in the current analyses the simplification of discrete soil nails as plates causes shielding of soil movement ( Top of nail and bottom of nail). Therefore in a 2-D analysis the exact soil nail-soil interaction behavior is not captured. 5. REINFORCED SLOPE STABILITY ANALYSIS THROUGH FEM AND LEM The general feature of the comparative study is to investigate the use of FEM in assessing the Factor-ofsafety. Stability calculations in Plaxis are conducted using the Phi-C routine and were compared to coventional slope stability methods such as the Method of slices. The following comparative finite element analysis was conducted: Group 1: Unreinforced slope with two different slope face angle using FEM and LEM Group 2: Reinforced slope with two different slope face angle using FEM and LEM Group 3: The influence of ultimate pullout force to soil strength ratio on factor-of-safety The geometry and parameter adopted in the parametric analysis is given in Figure 12 and Table 3. The failure mechanism predicted by both FEM and LEM in indicated in Figures 13a and b. For the 30 degree slope face both methods give very similar factor-of-safety values but for the 75 degree slope face the factor-of-safety value is dissimilar. As indicated in Table 4, the factor-of-safety values calculated using phi-c reduction is always smaller than the method-of-slices. The failure mechanism predicted using FEM and LEM is also different for a slope face of 75 degrees. Possible reasons for the disparity in the predictions are: 1. Different mobilized resisting forces along the soil nails 2. Progressive failure is not mimic in Limit Equilibrium methods 3. The slip-surface in Limit equilibrium methods are confined to certain assume generic pattern, whereas in FEM, the formation of the slip surface is due to the natural progression stresses and strains. 6. CONCLUSIONS The altered geometrical behavior of the soil nails does not mimic accurately the real behavior and therefore the calculated axial force distribution is not well captured. In the current analysis the interface elements adopt a simplistic elastic perfect-plastic law and therefore do not capture the non-linear elastic hardening/softening behavior of real behavior. Better interface models will be used in the future to investigate to better capture the pullout response due to stress-relief. Construction details like drilling and post grouting was not taken into account in the finite element analyses. It is known that the post grouting process produces a higher coefficient of friction and therefore a stiffer and higher pullout response. It is possible to capture this behavior in the current FEM code through the use of separate interface properties. The implication of FEM vs LEM parametric analysis is that both methods provided similar factor-of-safety values and failure mechanism pattern for the 30 degree slope face. For a steeper slope face of 75 degrees, the factor-of-safety value is dissimilar by as much as 50% in some cases. The finite element method provided the lowest values. For slope face of 75 degree, Limit Equilibrium methods may not give the lowest critical Factorof-safety. It was also found that with high nail forces, Limit Equilibrium method predicted un-conservative factor-of-safety values when compared with the Finite Element method.

7. REFERENCES Brinkgreve, R.B.J.,(2002), Plaxis finite element code for soil and rock analysis: Manual, Balkema: Rotterdam. Duncan, J.M., Chang, C.Y.,(1970) Nonlinear Analysis of Stress and Strain in Soil. ASCE J. of the Soil Mech. And Found. Div.Vol.96, pp.1629-1653. Kondner, R.L.,(1963), A Hyperbolic Stress Strain Formulation for Sands. 2. Pan.Am.ICOSFE Brazil, Vol.1,pp.289-324. Shanz, T., Vermeer, P.A.,Bonnier, P.G., (1999) Formulation and verification of the Hardening Soil Model. In: R.B.J Brinkgreve, Beyond 2000 in Computational Geotechnics. Balkema,Rotterdam:281-290.

Figure 1. Location of section 9 soil nailed slope

Original Slope Profile

Proposed Slope 45 L= 11.6m

1st Nail 2nd Nail Inclinometer 5A 45 L= 16m

= 40mm
18m

= 50mm

45 Inclinometer 7A

L= 24m

= 50mm

Figure 2. Section 9: Geometry of slope face, location of soil nails and inclinometers

Figure 3. Monitored axial and shear forces for section 9 soil nailed slope

Figure 4. Monitored lateral displacement for section 9 soil nailed slope

LAYER 1

LAYER 2

LAYER 3

Figure 5. Mesh Model

Figure 6 a) HS model in stress space, b) Hyperbolic law for deviatoric stress and axial strain in HS Model

Table 1: Basic characteristics of HS model Description of Input Parameter for HS Model 1. Stress dependent stiffness according to power law 2. Plastic straining due to primary deviatoric loading 3. Plastic straining due to primary compression 4. Elastic unloading/reloading 5. Failure according to Mohr-Coulomb model Input Parameter

m E50ref Eoedref Eurref, vur c, ,

Table 2: Soil parameters

Soft clayey silt with Sand Coarse Gravel 19 kPa Eoedref Unit weight, Permeability, k 1x10-8 m/s E50ref Eurref Friction angle, 30 Cohesion, c 10 kPa m Stiff clayey silt LAYER 2 20 kPa Eoedref Unit weight, Permeability, k 1x10-8 m/s E50ref Eurref Friction angle, 30 Cohesion, c 20 kPa m LAYER 3 Weathered Bukit Timah Granite 24 kPa Eoedref Unit weight, Permeability, k 1x10-8 m/s E50ref Eurref Friction angle, 42 Cohesion, c 40 kPa m
LAYER 1

12 MPa 12 MPa 36 MPa 1.0 38 MPa 38 MPa 104 MPa 0.5 160 MPa 160 MPa 480 MPa 0.5

Soil nail inclusions

Figure 7. Equivalent Plate (Smeared soil nail) for 2-D finite element analysis

Figure 8. 15-node Continuum Soil, 10-node Interface and 5-node Beam Element

Figure 9. Shear stiffness from pullout test

Figure 10. Comparison between numerical and field axial forces

Figure 11. Predicted and measured lateral displacements for section 9

Figure 12. Geometry for FEM and LEM parametric study

Table 3: Summary of test values GROUP VARIATION 1 2 Slope face: 30 and 75 degrees Maximum pullout force: 250kN and 850kN Maximum pullout force to soil strength ratio 3 Soil shear strength 1 : c=5 & =20 Soil shear strength 2 : c=40 & =42 Table 4 : Summary of results CONSTANT Soil shear strength: c=20 & =30 Soil shear strength: c=20 & =30

Factor of Safety LE Unreinforced Slope angle, =30 Slope angle, =75 Reinforced Slope angle, =30 Slope angle, =75 higher Pult/weaker soil lower Pult/weaker soil lower Pult/harder soil 2.216 1.058(circle)/0.890(block) 2.721 2.581(circle)/2.892(block) 1.478(circle)/10.915(block) 1.388(circle)/1.479(block) 4.297(circle)/4.593(block) FE 2.198 0.894 2.726 2.011 1.328 1.216 3.112

Figure 13a. 30 degree slope face

Figure 13b. 75 degree slope face

10