Optimization of geometric parameters of soil nailing using response surface methodology

Optimization of parameters of soil nailing is an important task in reinforcement soil problems. This paper focuses on the effect of nail geometric parameters on soil nailed wall analysis and identifies which factors that most affect their stability and cost using response surface methodology (RSM). RSM has been chosen to achieve an optimum combination of the soil nailing wall design. The influence of three factors has been considered; it included nail length, its inclination, and vertical spacing between nails. After a finite element analysis to model and perform the soil nailing simulations, a Box–Behnken design was applied, based on a set of experiments using various combinations. For this purpose, 15 runs were conducted to analyze tested parameters and to determine their interactions. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) and contour lines plots were investigated, and therefore, the most important parameters affecting the safety factor and the cost were identified. From the goodness-of-fit analyses of the model and the illustrative example, the proposed regression model provides a reasonably good estimate of the overall safety factor for soil nail walls and their cost. The results obtained from this study showed that RSM is an efficient and effective tool to identify the optimal combination, and it emerges that the safety factor and cost are most influenced by nail length and vertical spacing.

Analysis and Stabilization of Slopes Using Geo5 Software

With the development of technology and software, it has become easy to solve difficult problems in every field which use to take a lot of time. The use of software in the field of civil engineering has grown since the last decade. GEO5 is one such software which may be used to solve many geotechnical problems. GEO5 consists of wide range of powerful programs based on analytical method sand the Finite Element Method such as Stability Analysis, Excavation Design, Retaining, Wall Design, Foundation Design, Soil Settlement Analysis, Digital Terrain Model, Geotechnical Finite Element Analysis like analyzing and design of slope, design of retaining walls, settlement analysis, foundation design and much more .It is a very simple and powerful tool for solving geotechnical problems based on traditional analytical methods and Finite Element Methods (FEM).The easy-to-use suite consists of individual programs with a unified and user-friendly interface. Each program is used to analyze a different geotechnical task but all modules communicate with each other to form an integrated suite. In this project modules related to slope stability have been studied in details and then used them for analysis of slope stability. Using GEO5 software the geometry of problems were created in GEO5 and the analysis were carried out considering the stability and economic considerations. Also, the costs of different types of reinforcing methods were determined and compared. It is found that soil nailing is most economical. Keywords: GEO5software, Analysis, Soil nailing, Anti-slide Piles, Anchors, Reinforcemet