EXCAVATION SUPPORT

DEFINITION
• Methods and processes of safely holding back the soil of the walls of a
trench, in order to prevent collapse, worker injury or death.
• Excavation support refers to an engineered solution designed to stabilize an
excavation.
• Excavation support is generally required for excavations in excess of 6 ft or
excavation that are not sloped.
• Excavation support for deep excavations refers to the additional bracing
that is required to stabilize a retaining wall such as a sheet pile when
excavation gets typically deeper than 10 to 14 ft.
• Such excavation support systems comprise tiebacks, cross-lot steel struts,
rakers, helical anchors, and top-down concrete slabs.
 SUPPORT SYSTEMS – DEEP
EXCAVATIONS
• The role of support systems is to provide lateral bracing for retaining walls.
• Support systems can be subdivided into external and internal depending on
the load transfer mechanism.
• External supports (namely tiebacks) work by transferring lateral excavation
loads beyond the active zone of soil movements (retained side).
• Internal supports such as struts, rakers, or floor slabs, transfer lateral loads
within the excavation (across opposing walls or to other internal structures).
• In all cases, support and retaining systems have to work closely together in
order to guarantee a high level of performance.
 SUPPORT SYSTEMS
• Benching and sloping
• Trench shoring
• Slurry Walls
• Soil Mixing
• Bracing
 BENCHING OR SLOPING
• If enough surface room is available, sloping or benching the trench walls will offer
excellent protection without any additional equipment. Cutting the slope of the
excavation back to its prescribed angle will allow the forces of cohesion (if present) and
internal friction to hold the soil together and keep it from flowing down the face of
the trench.
• The soil type primarily determines the excavation angle.
• Sloping : a method of protecting employees from cave ins by excavating to form sides
of an excavation that are inclined away from the excavations so as to prevent cave--
ins.
• It may be difficult to accurately determine these sloping angles. Most of the time, the
depth of the trench is known or can easily be determined.
• Based on the vertical depth, the amount of cutback on each side of the trench can be
calculated.
• NOTE: Remember, the beginning of the cutback distance begins at the toe of the
slope, not the center of the trench. The cutback distance will be the same regardless
of how wide the trench is at the bottom.
 SLOPING
• When using sloping one has to pay attention to:
• Actual Slope – (depending on soil type) is the recommended slope.
• Maximum Allowable Slope (MAS) – the steepest incline of an excavation face that is
acceptable for the most favorable site conditions as protection against cave-ins,
and is expressed as the ratio of horizontal distance to vertical rise (H:V).

Any signs of distress such as:

• Development of fissures in trench face;
• Appearance of stress cracks;
• Material slumping from face;
• Bulging or heaving of the trench bottom;
• Spalling or raveling.
The Actual slope shall be less than the MAS.
 BENCHING
• Rather than excavating a flat trench face, benching leaves steps on the
side of the excavation.
• This can either be found as a single bench at the bottom of the trench or a
multiple bench system.

COMBINATION SLOPED/BENCHED SYSTEMS

• A variation on the sloping and benching concept yields this hybrid, which
• is widely used.
• In this combination, the bottom of the trench face is vertical. Toward the
top, the trench face is sloped back.
 TRENCH SHORING
Shoring is used when the location or depth of the trench makes sloping back to the maximum allowable slope
impractical. There are two basic types of shoring:
• timber
• and aluminum hydraulic.
Timber.
• The Designated Supervisor shall use the information in the tables to design the Timber Shoring for Trenches.
• The members of the shoring system that are to be selected using the tables are:
• the cross braces,
• The uprights,
• Wales where Wales are required.
• The Designated Supervisor shall
• select the size and spacing of members using the appropriate table.
• The selection will be based on the depth and width of the trench where the members are to be installed.
• selection is also based on the horizontal spacing of the cross braces. Where a choice is available, the horizontal
spacing of the cross braces must be chosen before the size of any member can be determined.
 SHORING
Hydraulic Aluminum Shoring.
• Hydraulic shoring provides a critical advantage over timber shoring because workers
do not have to enter the trench to install them.
• They are also light enough to be installed by one worker,
• they are gauge-regulated to ensure even distribution of pressure along the trench
line and
• they can be adopted easily to various trench depths and widths.
• The Designated Supervisor will use the tables in this standard to determine the
maximum vertical and horizontal spacing that may be used with various aluminum
member sizes and various hydraulic cylinder sizes.
• All shoring are installed from the top down and removed from the bottom up.
• The Designated Supervisor should inspect all hydraulic shoring for leaking hoses
and/or cylinders, broken connections, cracked nipples, bent bases, and any other
damaged or defective parts.
 SHORING
Shielding.
• Trench boxes are different from shoring because instead of shoring up or
otherwise supporting the trench face, they are intended primarily to protect
workers from cave-ins.
• Trench boxes are generally used in open areas, but they may be used in
combination with sloping and benching.
 SLURRY WALLS
• Slurry walls are continuous concrete walls that are built beneath ground level before an
excavation takes place.
• Slurry walls are the most versatile means of excavation support, because they can be
used in any soil and to virtually any depth, limited only by machine capabilities.
• The construction of slurry walls involves:
• the use of bentonite slurry or driller’s mud immediately replaces the soil that is dug out for wall
sections, ensuring that the trench will not collapse before it can be filled with concrete.
• Concrete is pumped through a tremie starting at the bottom of the wall, and displaces the
bentonite slurry as it reaches the top.
• Sometimes structural requirements call for the placement of reinforcing steel before the wall is
poured.
• The end result of this process is a continuous concrete earth retaining structure that is
embedded deep enough below the proposed level of excavation (and/or braced) to
resist all resultant lateral pressures. The slurry wall supports the sides of the excavation and
often is abandoned in place, or integrated into the permanent structure.
 SLURRY WALLS
Pros
• They serve a variety of functions, potentially providing sheeting, waterproofing, and load bearing
all in one structure.
• Slurry walls can also be constructed in a great many shapes and in varying site conditions.
• slurry walls can go in diagonal or curved patterns, and can be built right along side an existing
structure.
• they do not clutter the site with braces and supports that get in the way of construction.
Cons
• Despite their versatility and functionality, slurry walls are expensive and complicated structures to
build. There are difficulties in :
• containing the bentonite slurry
• The slurry also prevents direct inspections of the walls before they are poured.
• The construction process requires very costly excavating and pumping equipment,
• the wall components cannot be reused, as is the case with some other systems.
• Slurry walls, also called diaphragm walls, are the most economical solution only when dewatering is
involved or when no other solution is feasible
 SOIL MIXING
• Deep soil mixing (DSM) for excavation support involves constructing a support wall
by mixing in situ soils with a stabilizing agent.
• The mixed-in-place excavation support walls are well suited for urban areas with
high groundwater levels since the placement of DSM columns causes little
disturbance to the surroundings and generates low vibration and noise pollution.
• there are a variety of DSM techniques, the most common method of deep soil
mixing for application in excavations involves overlapping soil-cement columns that
are either installed using a multi-auger rotary shaft or a drilling tool
• The construction of DSM walls is typically faster than other traditional methods
(structural diaphragm/slurry walls, sheet pile walls, soldier pile and lagging walls,
secant/tangent pile wall and micro–pile walls) and generates fewer spoils than slurry
(diaphragm) wall construction.
 SOIL MIXING
• A stabilizing agent is mixed with the soil by multiple mixing blades to form the soil-
cement wall.
• A variety of stabilizing agents can be used such as lime, fly ash, and cement;
however, the most common is a slurry mixture of cement, water, and sometimes
bentonite.
• The resulting deep mixed soil column is often referred to as soil-cement. Although the
DSM
• specialty contractor often determines the mix design, it is important for the design
engineer to understand factors contributing to the strength and permeability of the
DSM column.
• The improved engineering properties of the stabilized soil are governed by a number
of factors including soil type, slurry properties, mixing procedures and curing
conditions.
• steel reinforcement (usually wide flange H-beams or sheet piles) is placed in the soil-
cement columns to resist bending.
 SOIL MIXING
• The goal for DSM walls is to stabilize open cuts and to minimize wall
movements by restraining earth pressures.
• Their main purpose is to act as a permanent support system maintaining the
stability of the excavation against lateral earth pressures while controlling the
deformation and settlement of the surrounding structures