Abstract
The stability of sheet pile supported excavations in saturated sandy ground is investigated numerically. The rigid plastic FEM incorporating the linear constraint conditions is used in the analysis. Two cases of sheet piles; fixed type and cantilever type are analyzed under both the undrained and drained (steady flow) conditions. Under the drained condition, the cantilever sheet pile case exhibits failure at a water head, half of that in fixed type. Under the undrained condition, the cantilever type sheet pile case exhibits failure at a water head of one fifth that in fixed type. Although the sheet pile is supported by struts, fully fixed sheet pile assumption should not be made in some cases of the stability analysis.
