Soil-Structure Interaction of a High-Rise Building Near Sensitive Structures in Soft Soil Conditions-PPT Presentation

PPT Presentation

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The presentation reports a three-dimensional finite-element study of the Waterfront Hotel, a 75 m high-rise planned beside the River Main in Frankfurt. The site has soft ground comprising Quaternary sand and gravel over Tertiary Cyrene Marl, with groundwater near the excavation level. Sensitive neighboring infrastructure includes river quay walls, bridges, road structures, and a roundabout intersection.<br /><br />The hotel foundation is a combined pile-raft foundation (CPRF): a 2 m thick raft supported by 34 bored piles, 1.5 m in diameter and 40–45 m long. The FE model represented the 200 m by 200 m site and surrounding structures, using about 770,000 elements and 1.2 million nodes. Construction history was incorporated in staged calculations, including existing quay walls and bridges, excavation, foundation installation, and gradual application of building loads.<br /><br />Under characteristic building loads, predicted hotel settlements ranged from 3.2 to 5.5 cm. In the serviceability assessment, hotel settlements were 2.5–4.5 cm, while the roundabout and bridge abutments were predicted to settle by up to 2.5 cm. The estimated differential settlement at a key point was 1.5 cm, corresponding to an angular displacement of 1/952.<br /><br />The calculated serviceability movements of the quay walls were limited: horizontal displacement toward the river was 0.2–0.4 cm, and settlement was 2–3 cm. The study also evaluated additional horizontal stresses on the quay walls caused by the high-rise foundation loads. Overall, the simulations were used to assess how the proposed building and its CPRF would interact with the soft ground and nearby infrastructure.

Keywords

finite-element study

Waterfront Hotel

combined pile-raft foundation

CPRF

soft ground

settlement analysis

quay walls

bored piles

serviceability assessment

Frankfurt River Main