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Piled raft foundation of a power plant in Rotterdam

 

 

 

Project:
Massvlakte Power Plant 3 (MPP3), Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Customer:
Bauer Spezialtiefbau GmbH, Schrobenhausen

Project description:
The monolithic piled raft foundation of the Maasvlakte power plant has a length of 165 m and a width of 110 m. It exhibits different thicknesses and different foundation levels. The raft is supported by about 600 bored piles with diameters of 120 and 150 cm. Some bored piles are executed with a base and shaft grouting.

Subsoil:
Medium dense to very dense sand. Clay- and peat-layers with a thickness of up to 4 m.

Scope of work:

  • Back-analysis of pile load tests with PLAXIS 2D and 3D. Calibration of model parameters using volume- and interface-elements for soil and piles and soil-structure interaction, respectively.
  • Calculation of a pile group using volume elements (PLAXIS 3DF) and embedded elements (ABAQUS).
  • Generation of the complete model with two ground-water levels and consideration of the varying thickness of the upper clay layer in ABAQUS
  • Determination of the deformations of the complete foundation due to 270 point loads, 45 distributed loads and loads of adjacent buildings and a coal dump
  • Determination of the differential settlements of the four main columns
  • Determination of the load distribution raft - piles

Used Finite Element Codes:
PLAXIS 2D V8.6
PLAXIS 3D Foundations V2.1
ABAQUS V6.7-4

Used constitutive laws:
Linear elasticity (generalized Hooke)
Hardening-Soil model (elasto-plastic)
Soft-Soil-Creep model (viscoplastic)

Typical domain size:

Model of the pile group (PLAXIS):
27.5 m  x  15.6 m  x  75.2 m
47,730 wedge elements
with quadratic interpolation
133,115 nodes

Complete model (ABAQUS):
440 m  x  320 m  x  75.2 m
2,572,824 degrees of freedom

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