Some Remarks on the Influence of Deep Excavations on Neighbouring Buildings

Increasing density of urban areas leads to building high-rise buildings with deep foundations, enabling their basements for car parking and facilities. Increasing depth of the foundation of these buildings increases also the need for more rigid earth retaining systems. Thus, generally, due to the importance of the neighboring buildings, great care has to be taken in the design process of the retaining structure and the support system of deep excavation in densely built urban areas. The paper summarizes a parametric study on a geotechnical model of a deep excavation, proper to Bucharest subsoil, Romania. The analysis of the excavation was done on the basis of the finite element method. The constitutive soil model used for simulating the soil behavior took into account the fact that the specific phenomenon in the soil, during the excavation process, is based on unloading. The most important factors which affect the influence zone of the excavation (excavation depth, excavation width, distance to neighboring buildings, and the weight of the neighboring buildings) are shortly described and their importance on estimating the displacements of the retaining structure are discussed on the basis of the FE analysis results