DeepXcav 2011 Background

Design and evaluate deep excavations with DeepXcav 2011

DeepXcav Excavation LLC is very happy to make available our best shoring design software program called DeepXcav 2011. This is our eigth main version to be released in collaboration with CeAS S.r.l. Many exiting new features are incorporated that include: a) improved user interface, b) generating models using a wizard, c) soil property estimation, d) automatic reports in pdf and word, e) Eurocode 2,3, 7 codes.

DeepXcav is a user friendly robust sofware program that evaluates and aids the design of deep excavations. The design of deep excavations can be a very complicated matter. The designer has to content with many unknowns and factors that influence the behavior of the excavation. Typically, there are two systems in excavations that must be designed: A) the Earth Retention System that contains the earth i.e. the support wall (sheet pile, diaphragm wall, etc.), and b) the Support System (i.e. the internal or external bracing such as rakers, struts, or tiebacks) that supports the earth retention system.

Performing detailed calculations for both systems can be a very time consuming process, especially when parameters have to be changed. In addition, many current software programs do not offer an integrated platform of structural and geotechnical analyses required to design deep excavations. As a result, the designer is forced to use numerous software programs to analyze the excavation and the structural system seperately. With the exception of finite element analyses, there are very few theoretical solutions for calculating lateral soil pressures from complex surface profiles. Furthermore, the designer has to save under different filenames different stages for the same excavation. As a result, the whole process can become unescessarily complicated and time consuming. DeepXcav addresses most of these issues and provides an integrated structural and geotechnical platform for designing deep excavations.

The current version of DeepXcav offers both traditional and non-linear methods of analyses. While it is realized that traditional methods of analysis have obvious limitations in predicting real behavior accurately, they are important for framing the problem and providing a back-check for more rigorous finite element methods. The beauty of DeepXcav is that it performs traditional analyses so efficiently that it leaves the designer with ample time to perform more time consuming finite element analyses. Future versions of DeepXcav will include finite element formulations.