Study On Soil-structure Interaction Of The Diaphragm Sheet-pile Wharf With Separated Relieving Platform

The sheet-pile wharf is one of the major type of hydraulic structure in portengineering. There has been a obvious advantage that to build sheet-pile quay-wall onthe soft foundation with the low allowed bearing capacity can reduce the amount ofearthwork and problems such as cofferdam construction. However, the majority ofpresent sheet-pile quays belong to the medium or small-sized berths, when increasingthe depth of harbor basin before sheet pile quay, the lateral earth pressure induced bythe upper loading and soil gravity makes excessive deformation and will affect theusage of structure. In order to reduce sheet pile wharf's horizontal displacement, weoften change the thickness of sheet pile wall or set up multiple anchor tie-rod. But it isdifficult to adapt to development in harbor scale and the depth of harbor basin.The diaphragm sheet-pile wharf with separated relieving platform is the anothernew deep water sheet-pile wharf structure presented after the covered type structure ofsheet pile wharf with barrier piles, which is capable of taking ships of more than 10100,000-ton in Jingtang Port and is the first of its kind in China. The diaphragmsheet-pile wharf with separated relieving platform is constructed relieving platformbeard by pile foundation behind the traditional single-anchor sheet pile wail, relievingplatform and pile foundation resists the upper soil gravity and surface loads andtransfers those loads to the depth of the soil, while the piles under the relievingplatform haves an covered effect upon the soil foundation, thereby decreases thelateral earth pressure acted on the sheet-pile wall and its horizontal displacement.On the basis of Jingtang Port engineering, the paper takes research on differentdesign options and types of structure through centrifuge model tests, and uses ANSYSto build the numerical model to analyze horizontal displacement, earth pressure,structural stress of the different types of sheet pile wharf. Compared with results ofcentrifugal model test, paper certainly interprets and studies structural mechanismabout soil-structural interaction. From test and numerical results, it can be seen thatthe diaphragm sheet-pile wharf with separated relieving platform externalizes itssuperiority and rationality, and gives theoretical supports for engineering practices. Atlast, paper has a certain description on prototype observation technique of this newstructure.