Reliability analysis of basal-heave in a braced excavation in a 2-D random field

A simplified approach to consider the effect of spatial variability in a two-dimensional (2-D) random field for reliability analysis of basal-heave in a braced excavation in clay is presented. In contrast to the random field modeling (RFM) approach, which necessitates use of Monte Carlo simulation (MCS), the proposed approach employs the equivalent variance technique to consider the effect of spatial variability so that the analysis for probability of basal-heave failure can be performed using well-established first-order reliability method (FORM). Case study shows that this simplified approach yields results that are nearly identical to those obtained from the MCS-based RFM approach. The proposed approach is shown to be effective and efficient for probabilistic analysis of basal-heave in a braced excavation in a 2-D random field.