Numerical analysis of diaphragm wall behavior in a jet-grouted deep excavation: a random field case study

Description

Huynh Huy Nguyen and Trong Nghia Le modelled in 2026 how uneven jet-grouted soil moves a deep excavation wall in a crowded city. Jet grouting stiffens ground at the base of a dig to limit wall bending, but designers usually treat treated soil as uniform, ignoring its natural patchiness. The team built a probabilistic model in which the soil's stiffness varied across space as a lognormal random field, based on laboratory tests giving a mean stiffness of about 1,337 megapascals.

Forty Monte Carlo simulations showed that spatial variation shifted both the size and spread of wall movement, with maximum displacement generally about 11 to 12 millimetres. For a limit near 11.4 millimetres, the chance of exceeding it fell from about 58 percent at low variation to about 35 percent at high variation. Vertical correlation mattered slightly more than horizontal. The lesson for engineers is that uniform-ground designs can understate the true range of wall movement.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13473453