Asymmetric earth pressure occurs on opposite sides of deep excavations near rivers owing to river‐side unloading. Traditional symmetrical excavation methods have difficulty balancing such asymmetric loads, causing the excavation support system to lean toward the river. Taking the excavation for a subway station between a river and primary road in Xuzhou as a case study, the influence of the riverbank stabilization berm pile length on the diaphragm wall deformation, strut axial force, and surface settlement were investigated using a finite element analysis and confirmed against field measurements. The results indicated that the berm piles must pass through the “active zone” of the riverbank to effectively limit the lateral displacements of the diaphragm walls, which were asymmetric on opposite sides of the excavation. Furthermore, as the berm pile length increased, the lateral displacements of the diaphragm walls on both sides decreased, their deformed shapes changed from cantilever bending to bulging into the pit, the change in the maximum surface settlement was consistently smaller on the river side than on the road side, and the axial forces in the first‐, second‐, and third‐level struts initially increased before decreasing, initially decreased before increasing, and remained relatively stable, respectively.
Zhang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.