ABSTRACT
The basement walls serve at least three purposes: temporary ground support, a permanent wall in the final structure and a means of transferring some of the structural load from the superstructure to the ground. Two methods of basement construction are commonly used: bottom-up construction, and top-down construction. There are four common types of wall construction for buildings: contiguous pile walls, secant pile walls, soil mix walls, diaphragm walls. Anchors or tiebacks provide a very convenient means of excavation support and eliminate obstructions in the excavation that are inherent to rakers or struts. The chapter illustrates three different types of internal bracing that can be used with diaphragm walls: cross-lot bracing, raker supports, and diagonal bracing. The axial capacity of a wall can be calculated in the same manner as that for a large diameter pile, by summation of the side frictional resistances on each side, plus the end bearing capacity of the base of the wall.
