Mechanical Performance Studies And Optimization Of Ultra-high Hydraulic Retaining Walls

The retaining wall is a kind of structure which can prevent the deformation and collapse of the soil.The hydraulic retaining wall is a special form of retaining wall under water condition.This kind of hydraulic retaining wall not only has the general function of the retaining wall,but also has the function of connecting with the shore and guiding or holding the water.Because of the existence of the water,the design load combination and function of the hydraulic retaining wall is more complex than the general types.With the continuous development of the water conservancy project,the height of the retaining wall is gradually increasing.The ordinary type of the retaining wall has been unable to meet the demand of the stability of the high retaining wall.The chamber-counterfort hydraulic retaining wall emerged at this moment.But,because the form of this retaining wall is more complex than the others,the mechanical properties and the calculation of the soil pressure behind the wall is very difficult.Additionally,there is no detailed design specification for this type of structure,the design of this kind of retaining wall is usually based on the experience of the designers.However,the retaining wall which is designed according to the experience,is relatively conservative in order to ensure its stability.Such design can not make full use of the material strength,and also will waste the construction materials,thereby increase the cost of the project.In this paper,a practical chamber-counterfort hydraulic retaining wall in height of seventeen meters has been studied considering the interaction between the wall and soil as well as the effect of three different water levels in order to analysis the mechanical properties of this retaining wall under static and dynamic loads.Based on the results of the research,the size of this hydraulic retaining wall has been optimized in the method of response analysis to reduce the project cost.The study mainly includes the following parts:(1)The research status on the development of the types,the mechanical properties and the optimization design in domestic and foreign situation have been summarized.(2)The non-linear characteristics of wall-soil contact state,the nonlinear materialproperties of soil and concrete,the principle and method of damping and seismic wave selection have been described.(3)A chamber-counterfort hydraulic retaining wall which is a part of a pumping station project has been simulated by the ABAQUS finite element software in three typical water levels under static situation.(4)On the basis of the static analysis results,the dynamic response of the chamber-counterfort hydraulic retaining wall in 7 degree seismic intensity has been analyzed by time-history method.Based on the dynamic results,whether this structure meets the requirements of the stiffness and strength of the retaining wall under the dynamic situation has been verified.(5)Based on the static and dynamic numerical simulation results,the response surface optimization has been made applying the ANSYS workbench optimization module.By coMParison of the simulation results between the original model and the optimized model under static and dynamic situation,the superiority of the optimized model has been verified.