Introduction

The International Conference on Geotechnical and Geological Engineering was held in Melbourne, Australia in November 2000. The conference is referred to here as GeoEng2000. A series of invited keynote lectures were presented at the conference. One of the keynote lectures was titled Computing and Computer Modelling in Geotechnical Engineering (Carter et al. 2000). One of the topics of this keynote paper was Validation and Calibration of Computer Simulations, which included a summary of the work by the German Society for Geotechnics on establishing some benchmark problems for validating numerical analyses.

One of the benchmark examples involved simulating the construction of a tie-back wall for a deep excavation in Berlin. Numerous people from universities and consulting companies simulated the construction history based on curated geotechnical data. The simulated lateral wall deflections, along with surface settlements and structural forces, were submitted to the organizing body for comparison with the measured data. The objective of this example is to demonstrate how GeoStudio can be used to simulate this problem. More specifically this example will be used to:

• Demonstrate the various features of GeoStudio that can be used to simulate an excavation construction history involving dewatering; 
• Highlight some of the most important aspects of modelling an excavation construction history involving a tie-back wall with pre-stressed anchors.