ZSwalls™ – excavation calculator

ZSwalls™ 2023 (diaphragm/sheet pile/soldier pile walls) is a standalone application to analyze excavations protected by diaphragm,  sheet pile or soldier pile walls, based on the ZSOIL 3D [8] FEM software.

ZSwalls™ 2023 is based on the finite element method including coupled formulation for fully- and partially saturated two-phase media and advanced constitutive laws. ZSwalls™ 2023 analyzes excavation sequences including intermediate stability checks and thermal expansion checks.

Watch ZSwalls™ tutorial on YouTube.

In addition, ZSwalls v2023 offers:

  • user-friendly graphical interface
  • simplified overall input strategy
  • automated and user-configured, ready to print reporting (see examples Tutorial 1 or Tutorial 2)

Start application screen for diaphragm/sheet pile walls mode

Start application screen for soldier pile walls mode

ZSwalls™ offers a variety of support elements which can be associated with different, typically applied excavation methods by:

  • retaining walls – diaphragm or sheet pile walls
  • tiebacks – anchors, nails
  • internal bracing – struts
  • top/down technique – slabs

ZSwalls™ offers the following features:

  • fast pre-processing of rectangular-shaped excavations based on the automated finite element mesh generation including locking-free finite elements and an advanced mesh tying technique
  • modeling of pile sheet and diaphragms wall and reinforcement elements such as anchors, struts and nails
  • modeling Soldier Piles (RC piles, full or partial length piles with embedded steel profiles, or steel profiles), lagging material (wood, concrete or any other), anchors, micropiles (as anchors with a very short free length), and struts
  • accounting for surface loads
  • advanced elasto-plastic constitutive model for soils, i.e. the Hardening-Soil model [5, 6], which is commonly recognized and accepted by the geotechnical community (refer to [3] for comprehensive descriptions on theory, parameter selection and examples of case studies). The model is extended to account for small-strain stiffness which is observed in natural soils [1].
  • fully coupled (consolidation) or weakly coupled steady-state analyses including the effects of partial saturation in soil (soil water retention curve model by van Genuchten [7]) -for the theory, refer to [8].
  • intermediate stability checks based on incremental tan φ – c reduction algorithm

ZSwalls™ can alternatively be used as a template pre-preprocessor in ZSoil® [8] in order to speed-up data generation.

ZSwalls™ requirements

  • Processor : i5, i7, i9 or Intel XEON; AMD not supported
  • System 64 bit: Windows: Windows 10 or 11
  • RAM : 8-16GB of RAM recommended
  • Hard-disk space : 50 GB
  • Graphical resolution : higher than 1280 x 1024 (1024 x 768 supported)

References
[1] T. Benz. Small-strain stiffness of soils and its numerical consequences. Phd, Universitat Sttutgart, 2007.
[2] F. Kulhawy and P. Mayne. Manual on estimating soil properties for foundation design. Technical report, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), 1980
[3] R. Obrzud and A. Truty. The hardening soil model – a practical guidebook. Technical Report Technical report ZSoil 100701, Zace Sevices Ltd, 2012.
[4] R. Obrzud, A. Truty, and K. Podles. Virtual lab. Technical Report ZSoil 120201, Zace Sevices Ltd, 2016.
[5] T. Schanz. Zur modellierung des mechanischen verhaltens von reibungsmaterialien. Mitt. Inst. für Geotechnik, Universitat Stuttgart, 1998, 45, 1998.
[6] T. Schanz, P. Vermeer, and P. Bonier, editors. Formulation and verification of the Hardening Soil model. Beyond 2000 in Computational Geotechnics. Balkema, Rotterdam, 1999.
[7] M. van Genuchten. A closed-form equation for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J, 44:892–898, 1980.
[8] ZSoil. User manual ZSoil v2018, Soil, Rock and Structural Mechanics in dry or partially saturated media. ZACE Services Ltd, Software Engineering, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1985-2018.