Nak-Kyung Kim

New Earth Retention System with Prestressed Wales in an Urban Excavation

This study discusses the new earth retention system with prestressed wales. The prestressed wale provides a high flexural stiffness that resists bending caused by lateral earth pressures. The prestressed wale system consists of wales, steel wires, H-beam support legs, and hydraulic jacks. The system allows for a wider spacing between supports and is more economically efficient than conventional systems. In addition, the construction process is relatively simple and the system demonstrates excellent performance. This paper explains the basic principles, mechanisms, and design procedure, as well as the advantages and limitations of this new earth retention system. It also presents the results for the performance of the field application and the measured performance is investigated and discussed. These results demonstrated that this new earth retention system with prestressed wales performed successfully in an urban excavation.