Deltaressystems design and analysis tools

Design of diaphragm and sheet pile walls

In The Netherlands, an extensive design procedure for sheet pile walls has been developed. Besides the partial safety factor concept of the Eurocode 7, the Dutch National Annex offers a clear step-by-step design process, checking against failure, verifying stability and allowing optimization of the design. Initiated by the Dutch Ministry of Public Works, the development of a software tool for the analysis and design of retaining walls started back in 1988. Since its initial development, many improvements have been made to suit the needs of geotechnical designers and consultants. 

The stability of the majority of all Dutch retaining walls has been checked using methods and tools developed by Deltares, the leading Institute for Delta Technology. In 2002, GeoDelft founded Delft GeoSystems. Previous releases of D-Sheet Piling were named MSheet. Since the formation of Deltares in 2008, Delft GeoSystems has become Deltares systems. Deltares systems makes these tools available in English for the international geotechnical engineering community.  Deltares systems tools come with a comprehensive manual and extensive validation and verification reports.

General

D-Sheet Piling is a tool used to design retaining walls and horizontally loaded piles. D-Sheet Piling’s graphical interactive interface requires just a short training period, allowing the user to focus their skills directly on the input of sound geotechnical data and the subsequent design of the wall or single pile.

Besides features generally found in other retaining wall design software, D-Sheet Piling offers several specific design features:

• Automatic interpretation of CPT´s
  All geotechnical parameters needed for input are interpretated from CPT data.
• Length optimization
  The critical length for the retaining structure is checked automatically by reducing the length of the wall step-by-step, until instability or unacceptable displacement occurs.
• Safety
  D-Sheet Piling verifies the safety of the sheet pile wall for selected construction stages by applying partial safety factors defined according to the Eurocode 7, including Eurocode annexes for The Netherlands and Belgium. The user can also define their own partial safety factors.
• Anchor wall stability
  The stability of the anchor wall is checked according to the Kranz theory.  
• Overall stability
  A Bishop slip-circle analysis is used to check the overall stability of the wall and soil.
• Feasibility comparison
  Projects can be compared to experiences of real projects and guidelines to help to ascertain if installation/vibration of a sheet pile wall of this type is feasible.

D-Sheet Piling comes as a standard module, which can be extended further with other modules to fit more advanced applications:

DGS 10.00 D-Sheet Piling Standard module (Earth pressure coefficients)
DGS 10.01 Culmann module
DGS 10.02 Eurocode 7 Verification module
DGS 10.03 Single Pile module
DGS 10.05 Feasibility module (included in Standard module)

Interaction with other Deltares systems tools

The geometry from D-Sheet Piling can be directly exported to D-Geo Stability for more detailed stability analysis.

Support

Deltares systems tools are supported by Deltares. A group of 70 people in software development ensures continuous research and development. Support is provided by the developers and if necessary by the appropriate Deltares experts. These experts can provide consultancy backup as well.

On-line software (Citrix)

Besides purchased software, Deltares systems tools are available as an on-line service. The input can be created over the internet. Heavy duty calculation servers at Deltares guarantee quick analysis, while results are presented on-line. Users can view and print results as well as locally store project files. Once connected, clients will be charged by the hour.