NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCRETE DIAPHRAGM WALL

As a temporary structure, Concrete Diaphragm Wallhas been widely used to counteract excavation problems in Iran not only in urban areas, but also in mountainous and coastal areas. This continuous barrier can be used in different soil types and it is able to resist lateral earth pressure, but its large deformation is a serious concern for the use of this structure in the geotechnical engineering. Dynamic behaviour of concrete diaphragm wall underlying earthquake is evaluated through fully coupled nonlinear effective stress dynamic analyses. Each model was subjected to three ground motion events obtained by scaling the amplitude of the Tabas (1978), Manjil (1990), and Bam (2003)earthquakes. Effects of nonlinear soil structure interaction(SSI) and a diaphragm wall can be simulated with the application of interface elementsusing FLAC program package. The results revealed that Concrete Diaphragm Wall has a better performance in clay soils compared to the granular soils. Investigation of the horizontal displacement over the concrete diaphragm wall has demonstrated that the maximum displacement occurred during strong motions and it is depended to earthquake characteristics.