Improvement of an existing building shallow foundation using soil nails supported retaining wall: A numerical assessment

Abstract

In recent years, the need to expand the land area for infrastructure development, such as roads and streets near residential buildings, in urban areas in Vietnam has become more widespread. Such tendency leads to narrowing of the space available for further development thus the ground condition around existing buildings often need improvement. The foundations of existing buildings can no longer bear additional stresses. In such cases the foundation and the ground conditions need engineering solutions to provide geotechnical safety. The present paper presnts a numerical anlyses of soil nailing, to enhance the stability of the foundation of an existing building constructed on firm clay soil. The finite element method was empolyed to compute the stability of the foundation with/without incorporating soil nail reinforcements. Additionally, the analyses concern also the retaining wall construction to assure long-term performance of proposed scenarios. The numerical computation results indicate that the stability of the foundation improved by soil nailing was not enough to meet the ultimate limit state. The combination of a retaining wall supported by soil nails increased the factor of safety to a value considered sufficient. The settlements, as well as the horizontal displacements analyses proved the correctness of proposed solutions.