Efficient analysis of underground structures considering bending effect of the structure

Abstract

Many underground structures that consist of reinforced concrete walls like tunnel, subway and culvert have been recently constructed. Commercial software, commonly used for the analysis of underground structures, uses plane strain elements to model those structures. However, the flexural stiffness of underground structure may not be properly modeled using the plane strain elements. Therefore, it is necessary to use fine mesh finite element models for an accurate analysis of a structure, while it would take a significant amount of computational time and memory if the entire underground structure and soil region were subdivided into a finer mesh. In this study, an efficient method is proposed to analyze underground structures considering the effects of the bending behavior of these structures. The analysis method uses super elements developed using the matrix condensation technique. Static analyses of example structures were performed to verify efficiency, accuracy and applicability of the proposed method.