This paper on "Practical Issues Associated with Nonlinear FE Modelling of Soil-Structure Interaction Problems" was presented at the 5th International Conference on Reliability of Finite Element Methods for Engineering Applications - 10-12 May 1995, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Summary

Mouchel was commissioned to investigate stability and movements of a large cofferdam during construction operations of a major civil engineering project. Matters pertaining to finite element modelling and analysis of the cofferdam. supporting structure, various excavation and construction stages, placement of the diaphragm wall and further excavations for construction of the main structure are discussed in the paper. The major practical difficulties encountered during the analysis of the problems using ANSYS are highlighted and methods to overcome them are reported. The issues described may be experienced by other design engineers and can be adopted for other general FE packages with similar capabilities to ANSYS.