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Because of its large size (30,000 m2 in plan), the 17.85- to 25.89-m-deep foundation pit of the 492-m-high Shanghai World Finance Center building was excavated by the central-island technique, i.e., bottom-up construction of the central cylindrical shaft first and then top-down construction of the peripheral rectangular pit. As part of the comprehensive study on the characteristics of this large-scale foundation pit, this study mainly focuses on the behaviors of the peripheral pit via the following investigated items: (1) lateral wall deflections; (2) vertical wall movements; (3) lateral ground movements; (4) axial forces in the cast floor slabs and braced struts; (5) lateral earth pressures on both sides of retaining walls; (6) variation of pore pressures along depth and deep artesian water levels; (7) ground settlements; (8) subsurface settlements; (9) basal heaves; (10) vertical column movements; and (11) column stresses. To explore the potential effects of pit sizes on the excavation behaviors, field data from another 33 top-down excavations in Shanghai were also included for comparison. The comprehensive comparisons show that in addition to the well-known factors (e.g., excavation depths, supporting system stiffness, and factor of safety against basal heave), pit sizes in plan played a key role in determination of the pit behaviors. The large-scale pits with the areas in plan of 30,000–50,000 m2 experienced wall deflections and ground settlements three to five times those of regular building basement and metro station excavations with the sizes in plan no more than 6,000 m2, and the corresponding influence zones behind the large-sized pits were also much wider. Different from the braced struts that just carried the load because of soil removal in the proximity, the floor slabs sustained the load induced by exposure of the entire retaining wall along the depth. For the top-down excavations in Shanghai soft clay, the lateral earth pressure envelopes behind the retaining walls were trapezoidal, but their magnitudes were significantly smaller than those predicted by the methods available in the literature, and the corresponding peak values occurred at a greater depth. The influence zones of basal heave caused by soil removal (stress relief) extended much deeper below the excavation bases than those assumed in the conventional slip circle basal stability models.
Tan et al. (Thu,) studied this question.