Use of ADINA in soil mechanics with case studies for excavations

The reliability and the variety of mathematical procedures related to incremental solution strategies for the nonlinear analysis as well as the general availability of the ADINA code make this latter particularly well adapted for soil and rock mechanics. These materials, especially the soils, have indeed a marked nonlinear strain-stress behaviour. These qualities are somewhat counterbalanced by the relative lack of constitutive laws applicable to soil however.

The first part of this paper deals with the general and practical use of ADINA in soil and rock mechanics.

The second presents, as case study, an ADINA use for the evaluation of the deformations around excavations in clayey soils. With the classical methods of geomechanics, it is not possible to determine these deformations correctly. Only the use of the FEM with nonlinear constitutive laws for ground performance and possibly considering also the pore pressure allows for the good evaluation of these deformations. Two very large excavations have been analysed in this way and it was possible to compare the results of the computation with many in situ observations.