Excavation Tutorial 5-1

Excavation Tutorial
This tutorial will show how to excavate through a soft clay layer to build
a foundation on the underlying stiff clay.

The finished product of this tutorial can be found in the file Tutorial 05
Excavation.s3z in the Examples > Tutorials folder in the Settle3D
installation folder.

Topics covered

Staging the water table

Excavations

Reference stage

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Defining the model

If you have not already done so, run Settle3D by double-clicking on the
Settle3D icon in your installation folder. Or from the Start menu, select
Programs Rocscience Settle3D 2.0 Settle3D.

Project Settings
Open the Project Settings dialog from the toolbar or the Analysis
menu and make sure the General tab is selected. Set the Stress units =
Metric, stress as kPa, and the Settlement units = Millimeters.

Click on the Stages tab. Set the Number of Stages = 4, and enter the
following names for each stage.

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Click on the Groundwater tab. Turn on Groundwater Analysis.

Click OK to close the Project Settings dialog.

Setting the Water Table Depth

In this tutorial we will drop the water table before adding the excavation.

Select Groundwater > Add Piezometric Line. Keep the default value
of 0 m, and click OK. Click OK to close the Assign Piezometric Line to
Soils dialog that pops up.

Select Groundwater > Add Piezometric Line. Enter a depth of 2 m,

then click OK. Click OK to close the Assign Piezometric Line to Soils
dialog that pops up.

Select Groundwater > Soil Groundwater Properties. Click on the

Stage Piezo Lines checkbox. For Stage 1, select Piezo Line #1 from the
dropdown. For all other stages, select Piezo Line #2. Click the Apply to
All button.

The dialog should look like this:

Click OK to close the dialog.

Adding the Excavation

In the first stage, nothing happens. The first stage is only required to set
up the initial water table. In the second stage, the water table is dropped
two meters. The excavation will be added in the third stage.

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Click on the tab for Excavation (Stage 3). To add the excavation, select
Add Excavation from the Loads menu. You will see a warning
explaining that full 3D displacement computations and 3D fluid flow
analyses are not done for excavations. The excavation in Settle3D is
modeled by applying a negative load at depth, equal to the weight of the
excavated material.

Click OK to close the warning box. Now you must enter the coordinates to
define the excavation. You can use the mouse to graphically enter the
points, or enter them in the prompt line. We will build a rectangular
excavation so enter the following points:

0,0
10 , 0
10 , 20
0 , 20
c
You will now see a dialog for entering the excavation properties. Set the
depth of the excavation to 2 m. We want to add a load to the bottom of the
excavation, so click the check box for Add Load to Bottom of Excavation.
Set the load magnitude to 40 kPa and the Installation stage to Load.
The dialog should look like this:

Click OK. Your model should now appear as shown for the Excavation
stage.

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Soil Layers
The 3D View shows a soil layer with a default thickness of 20 m. It is
assumed that rigid bedrock lies below the soil. In this section we will
change the soil properties and layer geometry.

Soil Properties

Select Soil Properties from the Soils menu. The top soil type is
normally consolidated soft clay. Fill in the following soil properties:

Set the name to Soft clay

Change unit weight to 16 kN/m3

Set Cc = 1.2, Cr = 0.2, e0 = 1.6

The dialog should look like this:

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Click on the tab for Soil Property 2. Change the name to Stiff clay and
leave all of the other default parameters as shown.

Click OK to close the dialog.

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Layer Thickness

To change the thickness of the soil layers select Soil Layers from the
Soils menu. Here you can add layers of different material and change
their thickness. Click the Insert Layer Below button to create a second
layer, and enter the thickness of the two layers as shown:

Click OK to close the dialog.

Field Point Grid

Select Auto Field Point Grid from the Grid menu. Enter the Number
of grid points = 500 and expansion factor = 2. Click OK. A grid will be
generated and stress and settlement will be automatically computed
throughout the 3-dimensional volume. By default, contours for Total
Settlement will be shown. Your model for Stage 1 should now look like
this:

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Results Visualization

You will see that there is no settlement in Stage 1 as expected. If you

click on the tab for stage 2 (Water table drop) you will see that the
settlement is 484 mm everywhere. This is because the dropping water
table causes a drop in pore pressure and therefore an increase in excess
stress. The increase in excess stress causes a significant amount of
settlement.

Now click on the tab for stage 3 (Excavation). You will not see any
contours in the area that has been excavated because we are looking at
the surface and there is no soil here! In the Depth box on the right hand
side, scroll down through the soil by increasing the depth, either by
changing the number in the depth box or by clicking and dragging on the
soil profile. At a depth of 2.1 m (just below the excavation), the total
settlement should look like this:

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Under View Controls, select the Deformed Contours checkbox. Rotate the
3D view to obtain a view like this:

You can see that there is a pop up below the excavation since material
has been removed causing a stress decrease.

The plot looks odd because of the large downward settlement in Stage 2
caused by the water table drop. To see the displacement caused by the
excavation only, we can set Stage 2 to be the reference stage and plot all
displacements relative to Stage 2. To do this, select Reference Stage
from the View menu. In the Reference Stage dialog, choose Water table
drop as the reference stage.

Click OK, and your plot for Stage 3 (Excavation) should now look like
this:

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You can now clearly see the uplift in the excavation.

Click on the tab for the final stage (Load). You will see that the soil has
been pushed back down by the applied load.

To observe the settlement due to the load only, you can set the reference
stage to Stage 3 (Excavation) and you will get a plot like this.

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TIP: you can also set the reference stage by right-clicking on a stage tab
and choosing Set as Reference Stage.

Query Point
To examine the settlement in more detail we will add a query point to the
centre of the excavation.

From the Query menu, select Add Query Point. You will see the Query
Point dialog as shown.

Leave the default choice of Automatic. Click OK and the cursor will
become a cross-hairs in the plan view. You now need to specify the
location of the Query Point on the surface. Enter the coordinates 5 10 and
hit Enter to place the Query Point at the centre of the excavation.

Now right-click on the query point and select Graph Query. For Plot Type
choose Depth vs. Data. For Data to Plot choose Total Settlement. For
Stages to Plot choose Select All. Now change the reference stage back to
Default.

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Click OK to draw the graph. The graph should look like this:

You can see the large settlements after the water table drop, and then
uplift when the excavation is added and further settlement when the load
is applied.

It appears that the water table drop causes a significant amount of

settlement, especially in the top soft layer. If we want to examine the
settlement caused by the excavation only, we can set the second stage as
a reference stage.

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Close the graph window. In the Plan View, right click on the query point
and select Graph Query as before. This time only check stages 3 and 4,
and for the Reference Stage choose Water table drop.

Click OK and you should see a graph like this:

It is now clearly shown how the excavation causes ~150 mm of uplift and
the subsequent load produces a settlement of ~ 70 mm.

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Repeat the above steps setting the Excavation stage as the reference
stage and you will see that the settlement due to the applied load alone is
~220 mm as shown.

This concludes the Excavation tutorial; you may now exit the Settle3D
program.

Settle3D v.3.0 Tutorial Manual