La excavación urbana y los edificios vecinos

Resumo

Currently, the intervention in urban excavations with greater dimension and depth is increasing in importance exponentially. The great sensitivity of the overlying buildings to the displacements and tensions produced in its foundations due to ground movements behind the retaining wall and the lack of resources and calculation criteria that the professionals who have to design these structural systems have to deal with, often produce unacceptable damage in the existing buildings. This document presents the extensive bibliography describing the research for nearly 70 years, that has been developed on this issue, from the retaining wall behavior patterns to the buildings and structures damage risk, including the analysis of the ground movements produced by the excavation adjacent to the wall. First of all (book I), present document analyzes the behavior of containment studying how different aspects impact its calculation like the characteristics of the terrain, the depth of excavation, methods of analysis, friction contention-ground and the weight of the building itself, all aspects normally covered when calculating wall retaining; but also analyzes other aspects usually dismissed as the stiffness of soil, the stiffness of containment system, the stiffness of the building and the foundation. In the final part analyzes ground movements caused by the behavior of containment studied. Secondly (book II), a parametric study is suggested to assess the buildings sensitivity to foundations movements, in order to clarify the sensitive standards about categories of damage currently existing, and to define new ones for each building type, according to the time, geometry and materials. Finally, the document attempts, by the conjunction of both studies'phases (containment - building) to provide general simplified criteria to calculate retaining walls for excavations in urban areas, and its involvement to neighboring buildings, to get an optimized contentions'design to minimize the impact on the neighboring building.