The application of a small strain model in excavations

The importance of soil small strain effect on soil-structure behavior was investigated by researchers in last decades. The finite element method (FEM) is always used to predict the excavation behavior, whereas there are not many soil models available to consider this effect in analysis. This paper introduces a simple small strain soil model-hardening small-strain (HSS) in PLAXIS 8.5 and exhibits its application in excavation problems via studying the history of two cases. The analyses also use two familiar soil models: hardening-soil (HS) model and Mohr-Coulomb (MC) model. Results show that the HSS predicts more reasonable magnitudes and profiles of wall deflections and surface settlements than other models. It also indicates that the small strain effect relies on the strain level which is induced by excavation.