Effective Analysis of Diaphragm Walls

Prepared by the Technical Committee on Performance of Structures during Construction of the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE.

This report presents the current design practice for diaphragm walls, with an emphasis on the most effective techniques. It provides an overview of various approaches to diaphragm wall design and presents several successful techniques used in Boston's Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel (CA/T) Project, a massive civil engineering effort that employed more than three million square feet of diaphragm walls. This report focuses attention on the importance of techniques that take soil-structure interactions into consideration.