Shoring System- Soldier Type -Cost effective earth retaining

In 2012, a client  reached me to get to a shoring solution for an excavation.

'Shoring' is a civil engineering technique to retain the earth in deep  excavation.

The Client requested a  cost effective solution to support   7 m of earth in a  deep excavation. I provided two options with cost comparison.

  

1. Driving  of steel sheet pile

2. Soldier piles. 

Option -2 was economical and technically feasible.  owing to existence of deep sandy layer in the sub soil profile , the driving of sheet piles  predicted to be difficult.

Chosen the sheet pile option, I  developed  an Excel spread sheet to calculate the driving depth of the steel H iron . Simultaneously I developed  a finite element model for the same using Stadd Pro.   I was compelled develop my own techniques to determine the driving depth of H iron as literature on the FE modeling using general FE software was limited. I did several modelling but did not get the exact bending moment shape as it should be. After several attempts of different methods, I was succeeded in getting correct shape of the bending moment diagram and was in a position to  decided the driving depth of the pile. I compared this results with the excel spread sheet calculation and the results were matched.