Computers and Geotechnics 28 (2001) 379396

www.elsevier.com/locate/compgeo

Arching eects behind a soldier pile wall

Pieter A. Vermeer *, Ankana Punlor, Nico Ruse
Institute for Geotechnical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Pfaeuwoldring 35,
D70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Received 19 June 2000; received in revised form 5 December 2000; accepted 29 January 2001

Abstract
A wall consisting of anchored steel piles with horizontal timber laggings was selected to
support a 16 m deep excavation with a length of more than three kilometres near Cologne in
Germany. Vertical holes were bored on the wall line, at 4 m centres, and steel piles were placed
within these holes. Good contact between the piles and the surrounding soil was ensured by
concreting the remaining space in the holes. In this way the earth pressure behind the wall was
transferred to the piles through horizontal arching, so relieving the timber laggings. As a result,
lighter timber laggings could be used and the economy of the wall construction could be
increased. In situ tests as well as non-linear 3D nite element (FE) analyses were carried out.
Horizontal arching was promoted by means of exible horizontal lagging timbers and solid contact between the piles and the surrounding soil. Vertical arching was induced by high pre-stress
forces in the upper ground anchors. FE analyses were based on both the elasto-plastic Mohr
Coulomb model and a more advanced hardening-soil model. # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All
rights reserved.

1. Introduction
As part of the construction of the new section of the railway between Cologne and
Frankfurt, the German Railway Company is making a connection to the Cologne/
Bonn Airport. Fig. 1 gives an impression of the excavation with a depth of 16 m and
in Fig. 2 there is a diagrammatic section of the tunnel built subsequently in this
excavation.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-711-685-2436; fax: +49-711-685-2439.

E-mail address: vermeer@igs.uni- stuttgart.de (P.A. Vermeer).
0266-352X/01/$ - see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0266-352X(01)00010-6

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The excavation has a length of 3200 m and is supported by a wall composed of

anchored piles with horizontal timber lagging [1,2]. The holes for the piles are drilled
without removing the soil. Instead, a continuous auger is used to mix the soil with
cement and water, i.e. a lean mixed-in-place concrete is created. After that, the
double U-section (UPE 380) steel piles are driven into the holes as illustrated in
Fig. 6a. This construction method ensures that there is a particularly strong contact
between the steel piles and the surrounding soils, achieving maximum arching
between the piles.
To design the timber laggings classically, often a triangular stress distribution as
indicated in Fig. 3b is assumed [3]. However, other suggestions have also been made.
The nite element (FE) analyses to be discussed in this paper will show clearly
whether the triangular assumption is suitable and to what extent the arching

Fig. 1. A view of the soldier pile walls with horizontal timber laggings.

Fig. 2. A tunnel section at the station.

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381

mechanism can be assumed for this type of wall. The FE analyses were performed
with a 3D version of the nite element program plaxis.

2. Soil parameters within the hardening soil model (HS-Model)

In this section the attention is focused on the soil parameters being used in the socalled HS-Model of the plaxis nite element code [4]. Rather than describing the
mathematical formulation of this particular constitutive soil model, full focus will be
on the meaning of the input parameters of this model.
Fig. 4 shows a typical curve of a drained triaxial test with constant lateral pressure

3. Under primary loading the behaviour is distinctly nonlinear and is assumed to be
hyperbolic up to a failure stress. Here, compressive stresses and strains are considered positive. While the maximum stress is determined by the MohrCoulomb
failure criterion, the hyperbolic part of the curve can be dened by using a single
secant modulus as additional input parameter. In the HS-Model this is E50, as
shown in Fig. 4. In contrast to E50, which determines the magnitude of both the
elastic and the plastic strains, Eur is a true elasticity modulus. In conjunction with a
Poissons ratio ur, the elasticity modulus Eur determines the soil behaviour under
unloading and reloading; the indices ur stand for unloading/reloading. Both the

Fig. 3. (a) Uniform distribution of active earth pressure,
h as applies to continuous walls; (b) triangular
redistribution as sometimes applied to soldier pile walls.

Fig. 4. Typical curve of a drained triaxial compression test.

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secant virgin loading modulus E50 and the unloading modulus Eur are stress-level
dependent. For the HS-Model, it yields:
ccot
3 m

ccot pref

ccot
3 m

ccot pref

E50 Eref
50 
Eur Eref
ur 

ref
ref
Eref
50 and Eur are input parameters for a particular reference pressure p . The
exponent m can be measured both in oedometer tests and in triaxial tests. One tends
to nd values between 0.4 and 1.0. A value of 0.5 is typical for sands and clays tend
to have m1.0 [5].
Fig. 5 shows the typical curve of an oedometer test. For purposes of comparison
with the triaxial curve in Fig. 4, the oedometer diagram has been rotated 90 from
its normal position, so that the strain axis is horizontal. In the HS-Model the virgin
oedometer stiness obeys a stress dependency according to the formula

Eoed Eref
oed 

ccot
1 m

ccot pref

Fig. 5. Typical curve of a drained oedometer test.

Fig. 6. Simulation of the pile: (a) in reality; (b) as a model.

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In the special case of m=1 one obtains a linear stress-dependency as usual for a
ref
ref
clay. In addition to the moduli Eref
50 and Eur , the oedometer modulus Eoed is also an
input modulus for the HS-Model. Together with the parameters m, ur, c0 , 0 and the
dilatancy angle , there are a total of eight input parameters.
ref
Often, no triaxial test results are available for determining ur, Eref
ur and E50 , in
which case one has to rely on oedometer results and general empirical data, such as
ref
ur=0.10.2. For sands, one can mostly use Eref
50 Eoed. However, this equality of
reference stinesses does not mean that the triaxial stiness E50 equals the oedometer stiness, Eoed. It should be noted that the reference triaxial stiness is
obtained by normalizing to the minor principal stress,
3, and the reference oedometer stiness follows after normalizing to the major principal stress,
1.
The elasticity modulus Eref
ur can be determined directly from a triaxial test or
indirectly with the help of oedometer results. If the unloading modulus from the
oedometer test is termed Eur
oed, according to isotropic linear elasticity the following
relationship holds:
Eur 1 2ur

1 ur ur
E
1 ur oed

Hence, with proper estimates of Poissons ratio, Eur can be calculated from Eur
oed.
For the FE analyses it has been assumed that the soil is homogeneous. The soil
parameters as listed in Table 1 represent a medium dense to dense sandy gravel [5,6].
In addition to the HS parameters, this table also lists parameters for the well-known
linear elastic, perfectly plastic MohrCoulomb model, as this model was additionally

Table 1
Parameters for soils and piles
Parameter

Symbol

Material model
Type of behaviour

Sandy gravel

Sandy gravel

Piles

MohrCoulomb

Hardening soil

Linear elastic

Drained

Drained

Non-porous

20

KN/m3

Moist unit weight

20

20

Modulus of elasticity

8.0
104

Unit

8.0
106

KPa

8.0
10

KPa

ref
Eoed

8.0
104

KPa

ref
Eur

2.4
105

KPa

Power for stress-level

dependency of stiness

0.55

Poissons ratio

ur

0.26

0.2

0.3

Secant stiness in standard

drained triaxial test

ref
E50

Tangent stiness for primary

oedometer loading
Unloading/reloading stiness

Eective cohesion

Friction angle

0

Dilatancy angle

KPa

40

40

10

10

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used in the FE analyses. The piles with a exural rigidity EI=66 MPa were modelled as rectangular beams with a cross section of 60
55 cm and a Youngs modulus
E=8 GPa (see Fig. 6).
The timber laggings with a cross section of 16
16 cm were modelled as elastic
beam elements. These beam elements are 8-noded exible plate elements and their
mechanical behaviour is characterized by a exural rigidity EI and a normal stiness
EA. All calculations were carried out with EI=2 MPa and EA=1 GN for a unit
wall height of 1 m.

3. FE-Mesh I
One complete segment of the wall extending from the centre of one pile to the
centre of the next one is modelled as FE-Mesh I (Fig. 7). The total width of the model
is 4 m and the length of lagging between the soldier piles is 3.4 m. The height of model
equals the height of excavation which is equal to 16 m. The model to be calculated
extends about 12 m deep into the soil behind the wall.
The timber laggings simulated with beam elements are shown with a height of 32
cm which is double the value of the real timber laggings. The timber laggings are
connected to the piles as hinge joints (which corresponds to freely supported in reality). An especially ne mesh was chosen for the parts behind the laggings in order to
get a correspondingly high resolution of the stress distribution and the deformation
of the laggings.
The FE-Mesh has been limited to the upper part of the wall until the bottom of the
excavation. The 3D model of the whole wall including the passive parts of the piles
would have been interesting, but calculation times needed would have been increased
even more. The rst boundary condition is the xation along the bottom edge at the
back face of the mesh. The remainder of the bottom of the mesh, the back face and the
sides are all smoothly supported. No displacement type of boundary conditions are
specied at the front of the wall and the top surface.
This particular mesh has been applied in calculations with the MohrCoulomb
model for checking the accuracy of the results from a coarser mesh as explained in
the following section.

4. FE-Mesh II and analyses performed

FE-Mesh II is simplied considerably in comparison with FE-Mesh I (Fig. 8). The
height of the laggings is increased to 50 cm, and because of symmetry around the
mid plane between two piles, only the right-side half of the segment with a width of
2 m is modelled. The overall height of the wall is kept at 16 m. In this way the
number of elements in the FE-Mesh is reduced considerably from about 4000
elements in FE-Mesh I to about 800 in FE-Mesh II. Furthermore, the time needed
for the calculations decreases from several hours to several minutes. With this
minimized FE-Mesh, it becomes feasible to apply the more advanced constitutive

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385

law, i.e. the HS-Model which demands a much higher performance from the computer system than the MohrCoulomb constitutive law.
To prove the accuracy of the analyses, the rst analytical step taken for FE-Mesh
II was to make calculations with the MohrCoulomb model. Comparison of both
sets of results calculated with FE-Meshes I/II enables to conrm the suitability of
the FE-Mesh II and guarantees its usability.
The displacement type of boundary conditions for FE-Mesh I have been discussed
before (see Fig. 7). For Mesh II the same conditions are applied while the symmetry
plane is taken as smooth as indicated in Fig. 8. The boundary tractions are indicated
in Fig. 9. They need some explication as they involve strong idealisations.
First the triangular stress distribution as illustrated in Fig. 9a is applied. These
stresses are in full equilibrium with the initial geostatic stress eld, which in case of
the purely elastic-plastic MohrCoulomb model remains elastic. The corresponding
ratio K0 of horizontal and vertical stress follow from
K0


1 

After that, in reality the piles are inserted and subsequently during excavation step
by step the laggings are placed at the excavation level and the anchors are installed
and pre-stressed. All these procedures are achieved by one calculation phase, i.e.
removal of the soil elements just in front of the laggings represents the excavation
and the activation of the beam elements represents the installation of the laggings.
Reality was further simplied by not modelling the detailed point loads on the piles

Fig. 7. FE-Mesh I, one complete segment of the wall with laggings 32 cm high.

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Fig. 8. FE-Mesh II, half of the segment of the wall with laggings 50 cm high.

Fig. 9. Traction type of boundary conditions: (a) K0 pressure on the vertical face at the initial state; (b)
pre-stress pressure on the pile surface representing the eect of the anchor loads at the nal state.

as induced by the ground anchors (see Fig. 2). Instead the anchor forces were
smeared out into uniform tractions on the piles as indicated in Fig. 9b. The anchors
were pre-stressed in such a way that the piles were approximately loaded by line loads
of 240 kN/m. As these piles were modelled as rectangular beams with a width of 60
cm, a uniform pressure of 240/0.60=400 kPa on the pile surface is equivalent.
The two phases of calculation can thus be summarized as:
Phase 1: calculation of the initial stress condition with gravity loading. At the
same time a triangular distributed load corresponding to the lateral earth

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387

pressure distribution at rest is applied to the front face. This gives a simple
geostatic situation.
Phase 2: application of the anchor loads to the supporting soldier piles in terms of
the pressure of 400 kPa. Activation of the laggings (beam elements) between
the piles. Removal of the soil elements just in front of the laggings. The redistribution of the loads is done in a series of load steps. When the sum of the
nodal reaction forces levels out within a quite strict tolerance, equilibrium is
said to have occurred [7].

5. The results of the FE analyses

Figs. 10 and 11 show the calculated horizontal stress distribution directly behind
the wall according to both the MohrCoulomb and HS models.
At all depths, the patterns of the horizontal stress distribution have the same
characteristics. In the direct contact regions of the soil and the piles very clear stress
concentrations occur. On the other hand, the horizontal stresses decrease rapidly
along the laggings to reach zero in the middle area of the laggings. This means that

Fig. 10. Horizontal stress distribution at depths of 6.06.7 m.

Fig. 11. Horizontal stress distribution at depths of 11.0412.25 m.

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there are very distinct arching eects in the soil behind the wall. It is striking that the
stress distribution patterns as calculated with the HS-Model and the MohrCoulomb constitutive law are the same. The equivalence of these results conrms the
reliability of the present FE analyses.
A comparison between the results gained from the 3D FE analyses and the more
or less conventional method according to Rodatz [3] shows that the classical method
is very much on the safe side. The 3D nite element analyses indicate that the horizontal stress distribution can be far less severe than what has been assumed up to
now.
The stress distribution described above can be claried further by considering the
principal stress distributions in two vertical sections through the FE-model as shown
in Fig. 12. Fig. 12a concerns a vertical section through a pile and Fig. 12b a section
through the middle of the laggings. The crosses in the gure represent the principal
stresses, where the length of the lines indicates the relative magnitude of the principal stresses and the orientation of the lines indicates the principal directions.
It can be seen quite clearly how the horizontal stresses aect the piles and the laggings. The section through the middle of the laggings shows very small principal stresses
near the wall while in the section through the pile relatively large horizontal principal
stresses can be observed. Clearly the horizontal soil pressure is more or less directly
transferred to the piles by an horizontal arching eect. Further away from the wall in
the direction of the soil, the dierences between the principal stresses in both sections decrease. Towards the back of the model, one observes a geostatic stress distribution with K0=0.35, which agrees with Eq. (5) for the applied Poissons ratio,
ur=0.26.
In addition to the horizontal arching between piles, the calculation results indicate
a vertical arching eect resulting from the anchor loads applied to the piles. This is
also seen in Fig. 13. In this gure, the colour black stands for full mobilization of
shear strength, the colour grey for low mobilization of the shear strength. The anchor
loads are applied to the piles which means that in the area immediately behind the

Fig. 12. Principal stresses in the soil: (a) vertical section through a pile; (b) vertical section through the
middle of the laggings.

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389

Fig. 13. The occurrence of mobilized shear strength in FE-Mesh I: (a) vertical section through the piles;
(b) vertical section through the middle of the laggings. The grey colour indicates a low mobilization, black
indicates full mobilization of the shear strength.

piles the shear strength of the soil is only mobilized slightly as the horizontal stress is
supported by the piles. However, the area at the very top of the piles is an exception.
Here, the shear strength of the soil is fully mobilized because of the high lateral
loads applied to the soldier piles and this then results in passive earth pressure. In
the mid section of Fig. 13b between the piles, however, there are low horizontal and
vertical stresses. Here the soil has to support itself and this is why there is a very high
mobilization of shear strength.

6. Two-dimensional (2D) analyses in a horizontal cross section

Using two dierent soil models and two dierent 3D meshes, an amazing amount
of horizontal arching in between the piles of the wall was found. For the elementary
considerations as presented so far, however, 3D FE computation is not necessary.
Indeed, a simple 2D analysis of a horizontal section (see Fig. 14) can also be performed to assess the amount of arching. Probably it would be more appropriate to
assume a plane state of stress, but a plane state of strain was considered to be acceptable. Two-dimensional computations were thus carried out using the plaxis version
7.12 and the HS-Model with parameters as given in Table 1.
Three continuous segments of the wall were modelled with the FE-Mesh III as
shown in Fig. 14. This plane is obtained by cutting a section horizontally through
the soil prole at a certain depth. The total length of the model is equal to 3
4=12
m and the model extends 12 m into the soils behind the wall.
Horizontal stresses were created by applying equally large uniform stresses on two
sides of the horizontal soil section conform to the boundary conditions of Fig. 14.
During this initial calculation neither the piles nor in the laggings were active. Hav-

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Fig. 14. The FE-Mesh III for a 2D analysis of a horizontal section.

ing created a uniform horizontal stress, the piles and laggings were activated by
assigning the proper stiness. Finally, rows of soil elements were removed at the
front of the laggings between the piles. As a result the beam elements, i.e. the laggings, started to bend and stress arches developed.
As a result of the overall arching eect of the soil on the piles of the wall, there is
the principal horizontal stress redistribution in the soil behind the wall as shown in
Fig. 15. Moreover, the stress distributions in all segments of the wall have the same
pattern, i.e. the horizontal stresses are concentrated in the area of piles and decrease
considerably along the laggings towards zero in the middle of the laggings. This result
is consistent with those of the 3D FE analyses as presented before.

7. In situ tests
In addition to the numerical analyses in situ tests have been carried out to conrm
the predicted arching. For these tests, successive laggings in the individual segments
of the 16 m high wall were to be loosened by removing the wedges as illustrated in

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391

Fig. 15. The principal stress distribution in the soil behind the wall.

Fig. 6 and the deformations of the remaining laggings were to be measured. First of
all, every fourth lagging was to be loosened, then, step by step, others were to be
loosened as well. If the horizontal stresses were really be supported wholly by the
piles because of the arching eects and not by the laggings, then theoretically the
remaining laggings should not experience any additional deformation as they would
not need to take any additional load. Fig. 16 shows the set up of the in situ experiment.
Well before the tests were done, a numerical prediction of this experiment has
been made. The 3D model should also be suitable to analyse the stress distribution
in the soil and the amount of deformation of the remaining laggings. Hence, the FE
models described in Sections 3 and 4 were used to analyse the in situ tests. The following calculation stages were considered.
Step 1: removing the rst of every four laggings;
Step 2: removing the second of every four laggings;
Step 3: removing the third of every four laggings.
Fig. 17 shows meshes with removed laggings. The still active laggings are shown in
dark.
Figs. 18 and 19 show the horizontal stress distributions on the wall as calculated
with the HS-Model. At the nal state, when 34 of the laggings have been removed, the
horizontal stress distribution has increased marginally in comparison with the distribution before the removal. Although a slight increase in stress can be observed on

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Fig. 16. The set up of the in situ experiment.

Fig. 17. (a) The rst of every four laggings have been removed in the calculation; (b) the rst and second
of every four laggings have been removed in the calculation.

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393

Fig. 18. Horizontal stress distribution at a depth of 6.7 m calculated with HS-Model at the central level of
the remaining lagging.

Fig. 19. Horizontal stress distribution at a depth of 10.69 m calculated with the HS-Model at the central
level of the remaining lagging.

the laggings at a depth of 6.7 m, no conspicuous alterations occur on the laggings

lower down. The stress redistribution before the in situ test was tantamount to that
found after the in situ test. That indicates that the laggings remaining after the
removing of the other laggings do not receive much additional load.
By FE analyses up to the phase before the removing of laggings, calculated with
FE-Mesh II using HS-Model, the maximum horizontal deection of the middle of
the laggings of 5.9 mm has been calculated.
For the triangular distribution as illustrated in Fig. 3b corresponding to the mean
horizontal pressure
h=60 kPa, the maximum deection f can be calculated by
f

3 qL4
640 EI

For q=2
h=120 kPa, L=3.4 m, E=6.25 GPa and I=(bh3)/12 with b=1 m and
h=0.16 m, the maximum deection f=35.2 mm results. It should be noted that this
value is a factor 35.2/5.9  6 larger than calculated using the HS-Model. This shows
that even this triangular redistribution gives a rather conservative design rule.

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The additional deections of the remaining laggings due to the removal of laggings have been expressed with respect to the state before any removal. Fig. 20 shows
the additional horizontal deections of the middle of the laggings both from the in
situ tests and the FE analyses modelling the in situ tests. As expected, the additional
deection increases with the percentage of the removed/loosened laggings. In the nal
step of the analyses with FE-Mesh II using the HS-Model, 75% of the laggings were
removed and a maximum additional deection of about 3.3 mm was found. The
measurements, taken with a precision of 1 mm, are shown in the form of a shaded
region. The measured data comes from several laggings at a depth between 8.75
10.75 m and shows a signicant scatter. The calculated results are found to be of the
same order as measured.
Fig. 21 shows displacements in vertical cross sections. While the horizontal displacement caused by the removal of the laggings only increases slightly in the

Fig. 20. Additional horizontal deection of the middle of the remaining laggings due to the removal of
laggings as calculated with FE-Mesh II (using the HS-Model) and measured in situ.

Fig. 21. Deformation which occurs by the removal of 34 of the laggings: (a) vertical section through the
soldier piles; (b) vertical section through middle of laggings.

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395

direction of the excavation with increasing depth, the piles move slightly in the
direction of the soil, near the top somewhat more than in the lower part.
It can be concluded that both before and after the in situ test, the horizontal stress
behind the wall is strongly supported by the piles through the phenomenon of horizontal arching. The removal of some laggings only increases the deection of the
remaining laggings marginally demonstrating that at this stage the arching eect is
even stronger than during the excavation.

8. Conclusions
Both 2D and 3D nite element analyses indicate the occurrence of a very marked
horizontal arching of the soil between the piles of the considered wall. In order to
check the inuence of the stressstrain relationship employed, computations were
done both for an elastic-perfectly plastic law with a MohrCoulomb criteria as well
as for a more advanced elastoplastic model. For both stressstrain laws, it was
found that the soil is more or less directly supported by the piles. Considering the
loading of the laggings, it is found that even a triangular redistribution along the
laggings of the active earth pressure as modied by the applied pre-tensioning of the
ground anchors [4] is rather conservative.
Experimental evidence for the above ndings comes from in situ tests. In these
experiments laggings were removed so transferring their loads to the remaining laggings. It was conrmed that these loads were rather small as otherwise considerable
bending of the remaining laggings would have been measured. The outcome of these
eld tests conrmed the suitability of the FE analyses.
Finally, it should be pointed out that the above conclusions have been obtained
for a sti soil and piles with an extremely solid contact over their entire length
with the supported soil. Undoubtedly the development of stress arches will need
some initial deformation. It may not develop in all soils and for all construction
methods.
Further numerical investigations would be needed to clarify the eect of the variation of the soil stiness in the arching. The reduction of the arching eects due to
creep and surface loading may be understood better by means of further in situ
measurements. Furthermore, repeated or dynamic loading on the ground surface
directly behind the wall may decrease the arching eect further particularly in the
upper part of the wall near the ground surface.

Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to Professor Frans Molenkamp of the University of
Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), England, for his kindness
in reviewing this paper and also his valuable comments and suggestions. The technical support from Mr. Peter Gollub of the Bauer Specialist Foundation Contractors Ltd. (Germany), is also gratefully acknowledged.

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