PROBABILITY-BASED SERVICEABILITY EVALUATION OF BUILDINGS ADJACENT TO AN EXCAVATION USING RANDOM FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

摘要

Excavation design is usually controlled by the serviceability-based analysis of buildings adjacent to the excavation site. In practice, it is not easy to implement the serviceability-based analysis due to the uncertainty of many factors affecting excavation behavior. It is desirable to incorporate the probability analysis into the procedure to deal with the effects of the uncertainty in an excavation problem. In this present study, the Monte Carlo simulation is equipped into the existing finite element method code, which is capable of representing the small-strain stress-strain characteristics of soils, to form the random finite element method (RFEM). Then, the RFEM is employed to perform the probability-based serviceability evaluation of buildings adjacent to an excavation on a quality excavation case history. A flow chart for RFEM-based evaluation of excavation-induced damage to buildings is established. In addition, a simplified method, called the KJHH method, is also adopted to conduct the probability-based analysis on the issue of building damage potential. Three scenarios were planned to compare the performance of the RFEM and the KJHH methods. The results reveal that the developed RFèM is validated to be a useful tool to consider the uncertainty of input parameters in the evaluation of the damage potential of buildings adjacent to excavation.