Aleksander Urbański

This paper presents an approximate method for a groundwater flow analysis in the case of a slope with vertical dewatering wells distributed equidistantly. Firstly, a multi-scale problem of flow to a drainage well is solved and flow model to a perforated tube with a filter screen is shown. Secondly, a method of building quasi-3D flow model of a slope with vertical dewatering wells using a technique of overlapped 2D mesh is shown. A short description of the implementation of this 2D/3D flow model for the ZSoil.PC code is given. The results of the described 2D/3D method are compared with a referential 3D analysis giving an acceptable level of agreement. Finally, the 2D/3D method of flow analysis is used in a two-phase (flow + deformation) formulation of a slope stability problem. The comparison of the results of these analyses with fully 3D (referential) analysis, on an example problem provides a very close accurate stability and deformation estimation; however, the computational time used for the 2D/3D analysis is significantly shorter than required by 3D analysis.

The numerical simulation of time evolution of thermal and mechanical fields in a selected section of a massive concrete dam was undertaken by means of the Finite Element Method (FEM) using 3D modelling. Low- (i.e. with time period – year) and high frequency (i.e. with time period – day) cycles of environment temperature variation were considered. The results of the computation confirmed the hypothesis of the vulnerability of the structure to thermal influences and explained the mechanism of the structural defects observed.

The main aim of this article is to show how different ways of modelling a construction process of soldier pile walls influence the development of the computational lateral earth pressure in this type of structure. Moreover, the paper includes an analysis of soldier pile systems designed in both traditional (Coulomb, Rankine etc.) and numerical approaches. In order to analyse the above problems, several numerical models of soldier pile walls were built and the results obtained were then compared.

The paper presents results of numerical analysis of the gabion retaining wall stability. A few of the possible design variants were analyzed and the optimal one was chosen.

The authors propose a supplementary method for modelling seepage flow around a deep drilled well screen. The study applies 3D numerical modelling (FEM) in order to provide an in-depth analysis of the seepage process. The analysis of flow parameters (flux distribution q(x, t) and pressure distribution p) was conducted using the ZSoil.PC software system. The analysis indicates that the shape of perforation is of secondary importance during deep bore well screen selection.