Behavior of sheet pile quay wall deepened and improved ground by the CDM method under earthquake loading

Abstract

Quay wall is very varied in structure types, such as gravity, sheet pile, and open berth types. In reality, many quay walls were constructed in the past, which had low front water depth and bearing capacity. Thus, it is necessary to renovate these quay walls to enhance their performance and increase their bearing capacity. This paper studied to increase the font water depth of the existing sheet pile quay wall by deepening the seabed in front of the wall. To ensure and increase the bearing capacity of the quay walls after renovation, the ground in front of the wall was strengthened by cement deep mixing (CDM) before deepening. By using the numerical simulation method, the study focused on evaluating the behavior of sheet pile quay walls under earthquake loading. Some typical responses of the sheet pile, such as deformation, displacement, and bending moment, were investigated and compared with and without CDM cases. In addition, the effect of the CDM strength and area on the behavior of the sheet pile wall was also considered. The results indicated that ground improvement before deepening decreased significant bending moment and displacement of the sheet pile wall. The displacement of the sheet pile decreased with increasing strength of the area of the CDM until they reached certain values.