Abstract: This paper investigates the soil behavior and adjacent building settlement disturbed by the installation of diaphragm wall. This investigation is carried out by the numerical software FLAC3D; and in this simulation, the UBCSAND model is adopted for the modelling. The feature of strain strengthen in this model is able to characterize the soil behavior at shallow depth. The trench excavation, cage reinforcement, concreting, and concrete hardening, involved the installation of wall panel is carefully simulated. The results show that: Thanks to the hardening model, the soil movement at the shallow depth is well simulated. At the depth smaller than 20m below the ground surface, the trench excavation caused a significant soil movement. The movement decreases with the depth and it maintains tiny in deep soil. The cage reinforcement and concreting alleviates the trend of the movement. During the concrete hardening, the soil movement tends to be stabilized. A project of diaphragm wall in Suzhou is re-examined by using the new model. The numerical results are consistent with the in-situ measurements.

Key words: diaphragm wall construction, silty soil, hardening model, numerical simulation, soil movement, building settlement