Armando Nunes Antão

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A previous paper studied the stability of soldier-pile walls in clay under vertical loading using upper bound analyses. A classical Tresca yield criterion was assumed in that analysis. This paper extends that study by considering a tension truncated Tresca yield criterion in an upper bound numerical analysis of the problem. It shows that assuming zero tension soil strength has a significant influence on the values of the minimum soldier-pile resistance required to ensure stability.

This paper addresses an implementation of the upper bound limit analysis theorem using a parallel mixed finite element formulation. The intrinsic characteristics of the adopted upper bound formulation proved to be suitable to adapt it to an efficient parallelization scheme. In order to illustrate the computational power provided by the new parallel processing method, accurate upper bound collapse load estimates, for 3D problems, are produced using a cluster of common PC machines.

This paper presents a finite element model based on mathematical non-linear programming in order to determine upper bounds of colapse loads of a mechanical structure.The proposed formulation is derived within a kinematical approach framework, employing two simultaneous and independent field approximations for the velocity and strain rate fields. The augmented Lagrangian is used to establish the compatibility between these two fields. In this model, only continuous velocity fields are used.Uzawa's minimization algorithm is applied to determine the optimal kinematical field that minimizes the difference between external and dissipated work rate. The use of this technique allows to bypass the complexity of the non-linear aspects of the problem, since non-linearity is addressed as a set of small local subproblems of optimization for each finite element.The obtained model is quite versatile and suitable for solving a wide range of collapse problems. This paper studies 3D strut-and-tie structures, 2D plane strain/stress and 3D solid problems.

The vertical stability of anchored concrete soldier-pile walls is highly influenced by the complexity of the interaction between the different parts of the structure, i.e., wall, anchors, and supported soil mass. The problem is analyzed using upper bound limit analysis through published solutions and proposed closed-form equations. A comparison is made between these equations and numerical limit analyses. An estimate of the theoretical minimum pile resistance required to avoid excavation collapse is presented. Published finite element elastoplastic results are used for comparison.Key words: anchored retaining wall, concrete soldier-pile walls, vertical equilibrium, finite elements, limit analysis, soil-to-wall interface shear forces.

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