High-Rise Buildings in Germany Soil-Structure Interaction of Deep Foundations

When considering foundations for high-rise buildings in urban areas a major task is the reduction of settlements and differential settlements of new structures and adjacent buildings to ensure their safety and serviceability. In many cases the soil conditions can lead to deep foundations in order to transfer the high loads of the buildings into deep soil strata with higher bearing capacities. Compared to traditional pile foundations where building loads are assumed to be transferred to the soil only by piles, the Combined Pile-Raft Foundation (CPRF) consists of the three bearing elements piles, raft and subsoil. The load share between piles and raft is taken into consideration and the piles can be used up to a load level which is much greater than the bearing capacity of a comparable single pile. This design concept leads to a considerable cost reduction for foundations of more than 50 % compared to the traditional pile foundation

New Exhibition Hall 3 in Frankfurt – Case History of a Combined Pile-Raft Foundation Subjected to Horizontal Load

Concerning the load bearing behaviour of vertical loaded Combined Pile-Raft Foundations (CPRFs) many studies and publications are available whereas for CPRFs subjected to horizontal or inclined loads scientific results or case histories are very rare. But also for horizontal loading it is possible to obtain a very economic foundation design and to reduce the movements by using a CPRF. Following a theoretical illustration of the load bearing behaviour of a CPRF subjected to horizontal loads the paper is focused on the new exhibition hall 3 in Frankfurt am Main. With a length of 210 m, a width of 130 m and a height of 45 m it is one of the biggest exhibition halls in Europe. The high horizontal loads resulting from the arch thrust of the roof with a free span of 165 m are transferred to the subsoil by two CPRFs. The structure of the hall, the design concept of the foundation, the subsoil conditions and some aspects of construction are described. During the construction process of the hall and afterwards the foundation was observed with an extensive geotechnical measurement program. The measurement program and the results of the measurements are described and valuated

Soil Improvement of Soft Soil Under Dynamic and Static Loading — Case History of a Geotechnical Field Experiment Under a Railway Line

To get informations about the deformation and bearing behaviour of a soil improvement by the use of Lime-Cement Columns under a railway line on soft soil large scale field tests were performed. The tests were observed by various static and dynamic measurement devices and over a period of 3 months 1200 train crossings were recorded. During the test stage the train speed varies from 30 km/h to 90 km/h to analyse the influence of the train speed on the dynamic behaviour and the stabilizing effect of the soil improvement. The measurements show that the large and heavy goods trains are crucial for the maximum dynamic response of the soft soil. The best results were achieved if the Lime-Cement Columns are founded in the good bearing sand layer

Soil-Structure Interaction and ULS Design of Complex Deep Foundations

In conventional design of deep foundations, some important positive effects evolving from the interaction of the bearing elements and the subsoil (Soil-Structure Interaction) are not utilised. These positive effects especially arise when using Combined Pile-Raft Foundations (CPRFs). The application of numerical methods during the design process of such foundations, which is explicitly allowed in Eurocode 7, is capable of regarding these effects. This paper deals with an approach using numerical methods within the ULS design for complex foundations and discusses case histories where CPRFs are used as a foundation for high-rise buildings in Frankfurt am Main. The paper will be finalised with an introduction to the Seasonal Thermal Storage where the piles of a deep foundation are used as energy piles to store or extract heat in the surrounding subsoil

Stability and Serviceability of Tailing Heaps With Visco-Plastic Materials

The tailings of potash mining are piled up in huge heaps with heights of up to more than 200 m and a ground area of often more than a square km. The material behaviour of the salt is strongly visco-plastic, so that the slopes of the heaps are moving constantly at slow rates. As the strength of the salt is rate-dependent, structural analysis of the slope stability has to consider the deformations and deformation rates and the interaction of subsoil and slope. Due to the complex material behaviour the structural analysis is accompanied by an extensive measuring programme within the Observational Method. The paper focuses on two slopes of tailing heaps, where huge deformations partly at accelerating deformation rates occurred, due to natural respectively man-made slip-surfaces in the subsoil. The deformation rates were critically high and deformations induced serviceability problems to infrastructure at the base of the slope. It is shown, how the restoration of the endangered slopes and infrastructure was established. The concept of restoration is based on both intensive measuring and numerical simulations

Coordinating Planning Processes in AEC using an Adaptable Process Model

The contribution introduces an adaptable process model to meet the special requirements of the coordination of planning activities in AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction). The process model is based on the concept of Coloured Petri-Nets and uses metainformation to characterize process-relevant information and to enable process-control based on the actual results of the planning

Reducing Carbon Emissions by Combined Pile-Raft Foundations for High-Rise Structures

Regarding the impact of construction processes on the environment, the reduction of CO2 has an important role. The production of materials e.g. reinforced concrete, and the construction of structures consume large amounts of energy, which leads to a large emission of CO2. The target is the reduction of the amount of construction material used and of the energy consumed for construction. For this, the structures have to be optimized regarding the geometry considering the requirements of the stability, serviceability, and durability. Also, foundation systems of high-rise buildings can be optimized regarding CO2 emission. For the optimization, three parts have to be considered. The first part is the detection of the real load-deformation behavior of a foundation element. This can be reached by large-scale load tests in situ. The second part is to use the hybrid foundation system Combined Pile-Raft Foundation (CPRF), which combines the bearing capacities of the raft and of the piles. The third part is the realistic prediction of the load-deformation behavior of the foundation. For this three-dimensional, nonlinear calculations using the Finite-Element-Method (FEM) are necessary. The contribution explains the three parts and shows the application in engineering praxis, including case studies

Abstraktion von Prozessmustern im geotechnischen Bauplanungsprozess

Der Beitrag basiert auf den Ansätzen und Ergebnissen des Forschungsprojekts >Prozessorientierte Vernetzung von Ingenieurplanungen am Beispiel der GeotechnikVernetzt-kooperative Planungsprozesse im Konstruktiven Ingenieurbau< von der DFG gefördert wird. Ziel des gemeinsam mit dem Institut für Numerische Methoden und Informatik im Bauwesen an der TU Darmstadt durchgeführten Forschungsprojekts ist die Entwicklung einer netzwerkbasierten Kooperationsplattform zur Unterstützung von geotechnischen Ingenieurplanungen. Daher konzentriert sich das Forschungsprojekt auf die Abbildung und Koordination der Planungsprozesse für Projekte des Konstruktiven Ingenieurbaus vor dem Hintergrund der stark arbeitsteiligen Projektbearbeitung in einer verteilten Rechnerumgebung. Der Beitrag stellt die Abstraktion von Prozessmustern im Bauplanungsprozess als Basis für die dynamische Prozessmodellierung in einem Kooperationsmodell dar. Ziel ist es, durch die Identifikation der mit dem Entwurf und der Dimensionierung eines Bauteils verbundenen Planungs- und Abstimmungsprozesse einen bauteilbezogenen Katalog von Prozessmustern zu abstrahieren. Die einzelnen Prozessmuster werden in jedem Bauplanungsprozess dynamisch über geeignete Kopplungsmechanismen in das aktuelle Prozessmodell integriert, so dass die für den Bauplanungsprozess typischen Veränderungen der Konstruktion und der Zusammensetzung des Planungsteams im Prozessmodell berücksichtigt werden können. Dazu werden im Beitrag die bisherigen Ergebnisse der Analyse des Planungsprozesses eines großen innerstädtischen Bauvorhabens, das als Referenzobjekt dient, sowie typischer Planungsszenarien in der Geotechnik vorgestellt. Anschließend werden Grundlagen und methodische Ansätze zur Modellierung von Prozessen mit der Methode der farbigen Petri-Netze mit individuellen Marken vorgestellt. Anhand von Beispielen für bauteilorientierte Prozessmuster wird die Funktionalität der Prozessmuster in sich und im gegenseitigen Zusammenspiel erläuter

Safety Assurance for Challenging Geotechnical Civil Engineering Constructions in Urban Areas

Safety is the most important aspect during design, construction and service time of any structure, especially for challenging projects like high-rise buildings and tunnels in urban areas. A high level design considering the soil-structure- interaction, based on a qualified soil investigation is required for a safe and optimised design. Due to the complexity of geotechnical constructions the safety assurance guaranteed by the 4-eye-principle is essential. The 4-eye-principle consists of an independent peer review by publicly certified experts combined with the observational method. The paper presents the fundamental aspects of safety assurance by the 4-eye-principle. The application is explained on several examples, as deep excavations, complex foundation systems for high-rise buildings and tunnel constructions in urban areas. The experiences made in the planning, design and construction phases are explained and for new inner urban projects recommendations are given

Abstraction of Process Relevant Information from Geotechnical Standards and Regulations

The paper presents the abstraction of process relevant information in order to enable the workflow management based on semantic data. It is shown for three examples, how the standards define the information needed to perform a certain planning activity. Abstraction of process relevant information is discussed for different granularities of the underlying processmodel. As one possible application ProMiSE is introduced, which uses process relevant data in individual tokens in a petri-net based process-model